I am just one of many many thousands of midwives, who are devoted to saving lives gently.

After disasters, reproductive healthcare falls by the wayside. Yet babies continue to be born. When all infrastructure falls apart, when the hospitals and all their technological equipment are destroyed, midwives come in handy. They can help women give birth with or without electricity, running water, equipment - even shelter is optional. When babies are ready, they come.

My sister had health insurance; she should have been warned by her doctors that she was at risk. But she was a minority. The doctors took little interest in her as an individual, and she fell through the cracks. And died.

As a midwife, I am immersed in Oxytocin day and night.

I learned that a healthy society is made up of loving, trusting individuals, and that these individuals in turn protect their environment, become stewards of our land, air and water, and they make peace, rather than war.

My first experience of having a baby was about as natural as birth can be, and though I didn't know it at the time, it set my feet on a path that eventually led me to become a childbirth author and a midwife.

There is a largely-ignored healthcare calamity in the United States that sees between two and three women die every day during pregnancy and childbirth.