The way a culture treats women in birth is a good indicator of how well women and their contributions to society are valued and honored.

Many of our problems in US maternity care stem from the fact that we leave no room for recognizing when nature is smarter than we are.

Don't criticize nature, stand in awe of it.

I dreaded having a boring life when I grew up. And I certainly can't complain about being bored.

When you destroy midwives, you also destroy a body of knowledge that is shared by women, that can’t be put together by a bunch of surgeons or a bunch of male obstetricians, because physiologically, birth doesn’t happen the same way around surgeons, medically trained doctors, as it does around sympathetic women.

If birth matters, midwives matter. In Europe, there are hospitals where the cesarean rate is less than 10%, and you'll find midwives in these hospitals, you'll see a lot less re-admissions with infections and complications, and you'll see a lot less injury to mothers.

Simply put, when there is no home birth in a society, or when home birth is driven completely underground, essential knowledge of women’s capacities in birth is lost to the people of that society—to professional caregivers, as well as to the women of childbearing age themselves.