Mitt Romney gives a good spanking to a radio host who trys to bait him with a religious question about mormonism and abortion.
The guy has the audacity to say that he knows more about mormonism than Romney, especially as related to personal beliefs and excomunication.
People really don’t get this side of our faith. They just see the strict moral code and the fact that we are held to it with disciplinary councils and even excomunication and figure if the church makes a public statement about something that mormons are held to it or excomunicated.
This topic fits well with the subjects of vaccines and birth. The church has a public statement endorsing vaccination and even uses church funds to promote vaccines in third world countries. They also put out a statement in the 80’s basically endorsing medical childbirth. The tone of the statement was “we have childbirth all figured out with medical science and women should use this care for babies.”
This article from Welfare Services is a good indicator of church member attitudes regarding health care. Go Here.
I don’t vaccinate my kids and I don’t use medical care for birth, but does that mean that my membership in the church is at stake because I don’t do these things? No, this is my personal choice and the principle that is most honored in Mormonism is in fact having the freedom to choose. As medicine continues to descend into a morass of surgery and illegitimacy as those doctors pushing for a 100% C-section rate continue to be the ones in charge of the obstetric societies, studies, and make public policy for the practice of obstetrics, I predict the LDS church will at some point have to reconsider its stance of publicly promoting allopathic childbirth and vaccines.
As the evidence that these things are killing our children continues to mount, I believe a debate will have to take place in the church, if it is not already taking place, and the members will be encouraged to use their own judgement in these matters.
The homeschooling issue is a good illustration of this as well. For years it was assumed that mormons would send children to public schools. Those first pioneering families who homeschooled, often experienced much social rejection from peers for this choice, even in mormon circles. I was one of those people experiencing the rejection and had several good members of the church say hurtful things to me because our family planned to do something different in regards to our childrens education. Now that homeschool has hit the mainstream in our culture, the general tone and demeanor has changed, in society and at church.
Heck, I remember hearing a story about a woman who had her temple recomend taken away for homeschooling. I heard this story first hand from Hartman Rector who was a general authority at the time. He said that he visited the stake president who had done this and made him publicly apologize to this family in stake conference and restore this mothers recomend to her. Just hearing that story comforted me as we were planning to homeschool in a stake where we were the only ones who would be doing it.
As for home birth, well, I would anticipate that some overzealous church leaders may engage in this sort of behavior – pulling recomends, threatening excomunication, etc…because it is human nature to assume that if someone does something that is different, that perhaps it means they are not faithful or a good member of the church.
But I can promise you who are reading that the questions “do you vaccinate your children?” and ” Do you get medical prenatal care” are not the questions that are asked in order to obtain a temple recomend. The guidlines from the church are just that, guidelines. But I am a free agent who has the ability to think, ponder, and pray about any topic related to mothering, and then follow my conscience in making choices for and in behalf of my children.
I do think it is sad that mormon women have been so culturally steeped in medical dogma that many will not even consider doing something else. At playgroup last week I was talking to a new LDS friend and when I told her that Paul and I delivered out last two boys at home alone, she was just incredulous. Because the women of the church are so devoted to having children, often planning for a large brood, I believe that many women experience a severe “trial of their faith” around birth knowing what is awaiting them in the delivery room when they give birth.
And because our mormon culture is so assumtive towards medical birth, assuming that birth will be in the hospital surrounded by doctors and drugs, this dichotomy of being shoved to drugs and surgery by our peers at church juxtiposed with our own inherent sense that something is very, very off in medical birth and will pose a danger to us and our unborn creates a spiritual crisis for many women. I have watched this crisis play out over and over and over again in the lives of people I love.
And even when mothers pull away from the medical world, it is not all peace and happiness for them. I have watched beautiful LDS women literally lose their minds while they experience the lonliness and rejection from fellow mothers at church simply because they chose to birth at home and rejected worldly mothering as typified by bottles, pacifiers, vaccines, antibiotics, and mother substitutes. Some of these amazing, thinking, independent women have paid a hefty price for non-conformity to societal and mormon standards of mothering, and it has been really sad to watch.
But we are where we are in our society and mormon culture and weeping and moaning about it is not going to change anything. My experience has been that my new mormon friends think I am an odd person until we get talking about Provident Living. When I explain unassisted childbirth to them in the context of last days events and the second coming of Jesus Christ, that is when they pause and seem to “get it”. And the rejection and suspicion often melts into understanding.
I had this experience with my mormon bishop. He is such a good friend! When I birthed Andy at home and then ended up in the hospital needing a transfusion, as soon as he heard about it he raced over to the hospital and held my hand the whole time the blood dripped into my veins. He had known about our plans to give birth unassisted, and while he conveyed great concern for me and this choice, he said to me before the birth that he knew it was not his place to make this choice for me. This was especially interesting coming from him, as he worked in the medical field at the time as an administrator.
For a couple years after Andys birth, I felt only loving compassion from him, but also some curiosity and wonder that we would do something so “deadly and dangerous” for me and my unborn child.
Just before the ward split and he moved into another congregation across town he and I were talking one time, this was just after 9-11, and we were discussing end times events, terrorism and the potential for nuclear and biological attacks. I said to him, “You know Dave, all of those end times prophecies are the main reason I got into unassisted birth”. He looked at me, and his eyes melted into understanding and after years of gentle probing and quiet curiousity about our family, I knew that he finally GOT IT. And from that day to today every time I see him and his family all I feel is solid friendship and acceptance. And it has been wonderful.
Now just because this one man took the time to get to know us and talk to us enough to understand our hearts (and it took six years for that to happen), and stop judging us in his heart, does not mean that every mormon is that open and accepting of those who live life differently. My experience has been that those mothers most drugged and chopped up by birth are the ones who have the hardest time reconciling my life choices around motherhood and this has created some very uncomfortable social situations at times.
Do I see anything changing in terms of cultural expectations in mormonism towards medicine and allopathic everything? Nope. I predict that we will continue to be steeped and culturally trained in medicine for the next fifty years, until it becomes so apparent that medicine has in fact been destroying our health and causing way more distress than it ever cures. And at some point I predict a crisis that may shake the church at its very foundations, literally split it in two. And this schism will revolve around medicine and natural family living.
That is my prediction and my belief. The fact that it is going to play out around the births of my grandchildren and great grandchildren causes some discomfort and concern. But I believe ultimately that truth will set all of us free to lead the most holistic and happy lives possible and as truth continues to pour out on our world through the internet, our job as thinking individuals is simply to take the time to search, ponder, and pray to know the truth of all things, especially the truths surrounding how to create healthy children.
I have been so thrilled with the recent media exposure around unassisted birth. I said on this blog in the introduction written in July of 2005 QUOTE:

“But as the powers that be realize the scope and power of the Freebirth movement, I predict that they will attempt to intimidate individual families. The homeschooling movement in America has an interesting history. The pioneers of the 60’s and 70’s had some truly harrowing experiences as they attempted to free their children from the Marxist wasteland and teach them some truth (and how to read!). Like these pioneering parents, who have largely had great success in education, I predict that the Unassisted Childbirth movement will grow exponentially as the truth about medical birth becomes more available to the average consumer and parents refuse to cave to the pressure to spend the money for mothers and babies to be cut away from each other.

I also predict that as soon as the Medical Profession perceives that our movement is strong enough that we are depriving them of money, the backlash to our efforts will be immediate and harsh. I believe an all out war against Freebirth will be declared and carried out in the Media, in the chat rooms, in the Blogs, and on the front lines in communities as the Social Workers, Police, and Medical Workers realize that a growing group of families are unwilling to purchase what the doctors have to sell. The term “Medical Neglect” should have chilling sensations associated with it. At least for me it does.’

The thing I don’t really get is that in America we have anti-trust laws and laws against monopolies. Everyone knows that ACOG enjoys a complete monopoly over birth in America, yet this trade union regularly goes to bat for the docs over what is best for patients over and over and over again in setting up guidelines and practices. And individual parents do not have the power to fight them in the courts or even in the marketplace of ideas because of that monopoly power. This paper from 1995 written for the Cato Institute is a good primer on the whole political side of it:
The Medical Monopoly: Protecting Consumers or Limiting Competition?
by Sue Blevins
Sue A. Blevins is a writer and health policy consultant based in Boston.

“What should government do if it is serious about cutting health spending and improving access to affordable health care? The first step should be to eliminate the anti-competitive barriers that restrict access to low-cost providers, namely licensure laws and federal reimbursement regulations. Americans should not be forced to substitute providers against their will; rather, they should be free to choose among all types of health care providers.

Instead of imposing strict licensure laws that focus on entry into the market but do not guarantee quality control, states should hold professionals equally accountable for the quality of their outcomes. That will reduce the need for strict licensure laws and other regulations that are purported to protect the public at large.

The time is right for eliminating barriers to nonphysician health care providers. Many Americans are seeking low- cost nontraditional providers and even choose to pay out-of- pocket for their services. Breaking the anti-competitive barriers of licensure laws and federal reimbursement regulations will provide meaningful health reform, increase consumer choice, and reduce health care costs.”

Ms. Blevins wrote those words 12 years ago and things have only gotten worse. Midwives continue to be harrassed out of practice, laws and licensing around birth have constricted to the point where parents either choose complete obstetric or unassisted birth.
And now we have politicians who want to completely socialize the whole mess. Make the tax payers pay for all that abomination.
No, what we need in America is for someone to come in and break up the monopoly. Pull out a blow torch and blast it to bits. Set off an explosion under the pompous derierres of those who live so deliciously off the tortured wombs of the mothers of America and the hard working Men who love them and work to provide for them.
We need to get rid of all licensing of health care and open up the flood gates of freedom and let consumers decide for themselves what they will and will not pay for. Then, only then, will we see that wall of obtetrics come crashing down and families enabled to run to the freedom and health that is waiting on the other side.

Jenny Hatch