Ina May Gaskin: Speech at the 2011 Right Livelihood Awards
The Right Livelihood Award was established in 1980 to honour and support those “offering practical and exemplary answers to the most urgent challenges facing us today”. It has become widely known as the ‘Alternative Nobel Prize’ and there are now 149 Laureates from 62 countries.
Ina May Gaskin, one of the leading midwives in United States, has received a Right Livelihood Award in 2011, and said the following in her inauguration speech:
“Most of us necessarily share an awareness of powerful forces that now threaten the continued existence of the profession of midwifery in many parts of the world. Rates of cesarean section are rising rapidly in most countries, far beyond the upper limits recommended by the World Health Organization. As cesarean rates increase, rates of maternal death and serious injury rise as well, and women’s fears of birth increase. At the same time, time-honored knowledge and skills begin to vanish. I have visited private hospitals in Brazil where the cesarean rate was 95%, because women (and their doctors) had become so afraid of the normal process of birth that the cesarean became the default.” Read more ยป