"There is a push to try to criminalize spontaneous birth and out-of-hospital birth."
Vol 5, Issue 5: May 2025
Welcome back to the Lighthouse! While we are closing out May today, the month started with May Day — otherwise known as International Workers' Day — which in Wisconsin was marked with protests in Madison and Milwaukee rallying for workers and immigrants. Shout-out to Voces De La Frontera for organizing the Milwaukee protest and the Madison area high school students that staged a walkout to the Capitol!
May 15th signified another important day this month: Nakba Day, which this year marked the 77th anniversary of the Nakba. As Palestinians — especially children — continue to face starvation as Israel blocks access to food and enacts all other means of death-making (from airstrikes to direct shootings and beyond), let us all continue to do whatever we can to get them the resources they need and fight for their liberation.
On the public health front, COVID wastewater levels are still low, but we’re also moving into warmer weather which brings with it more gatherings and ample opportunity for spread. To make matters worse, there’s a new strain that has officially made its way to the U.S., where it’s likely to spread (especially since it’s highly transmissible). At the same time, the anti-public-health federal government has stopped recommending COVID vaccinations to pregnant people and children (and created needlessly stricter guidelines for who can get it), which will decrease access since insurance companies will likely stop paying for them. This is particularly cruel considering that pregnant people (and their pregnancies) have a higher risk of complications from COVID infections, and despite what some have claimed, children are absolutely harmed by COVID infections. We’re also seeing the CDC getting kneecapped, continued efforts to ban masking, cuts to Long COVID research and aid, and contracts for developing flu vaccines (including for bird flu) getting cancelled while the labor and safety impacts of bird flu are increasing and virologists from around the world are warning that we need to be prepared for human-to-human spread. If you haven’t already, now would be a great time to plug into your local mask bloc!
Now, onto the newsletter!
Midwife’s 14-Year Sentence Highlights Attacks on Women’s Autonomy, Global Surge in Unnecessary C-sections
“On the other hand, it has been demonstrated that pregnancy and birth care approaches that prioritize human relationships, collaborative multidisciplinary teamwork, and midwife-led care are associated with safer outcomes, physiological births (spontaneous, minimal intervention), and lower health-care costs.”
Fifteen years ago, a doctor in Brazil named Ricardo Jones and his wife, a nurse named Neusa, were helping to deliver a baby at a home birth. They both prioritize a humanized birth experience, working in the long tradition of midwifery to provide person-centered care. While the birth went well, Ricardo and Neusa noted that the baby was breathing fast and encouraged the mother to go to the hospital two hours later, which she did after some reluctance. The baby experienced problems overnight there, and while they were given antibiotics four and a half hours after arriving, they died 24 hours after their birth due to congenital pneumonia. All these years later, Ricardo and Neusa are being charged with first-degree murder of the infant, with Ricardo facing 14 years in prison and Neusa facing 11 years.
“Over a decade in prison each for murder, all because they assisted a home birth,” you may be wondering. “Am I missing something?” If that seems extreme and strange to you, you’re absolutely right to question it. The fact that the child died is, of course, a tragedy. But what evidence is there that their actions in a home birth caused it? According to Ricardo’s recounting of the trial, there isn’t any. As he explained:
Humanized childbirth — a project adopted by the World Health Organization, the Pan American Health Organization and the Brazilian Ministry of Health itself — was treated by members of the Public Prosecutor's Office as an “exotic ideology,” the narcissistic project of a doctor, something that put the lives of women and their children at risk. No evidence of this was presented, but the jury — composed of six women and one man! — decided that the birth at home (which the mother always insisted on herself) and the calm handling of events there were the cause of the baby’s death. Meanwhile, the consensus among all those who evaluated the case was that the death was due to congenital pneumonia. Extremely serious. Probably untreatable, but where the errors committed by the hospital’s team of neonatologists contributed to the tragic end.
And others have noticed this, too. As we passed the International Day of the Midwife on May 5th, people couldn’t help but see the connection: this is part of the larger attack on midwifery in the name of money and control.
I’ve talked before about why the cesarean rate matters, particularly in how cesareans get forced onto people without a medical need and tend to lead to more medical issues in the end while making hospitals more money (both through costing more overall and because it’s faster and easier to schedule around than an vaginal birth, allowing more births in a given time). But there’s another side to that, which is looking at what we lose when we allow capitalism to dictate the care we offer. As the leading quote mentions, we know that midwife-lead care is associated with better birth outcomes (and not just in low-risk births), and it’s easier to integrate into emergency situations, which are becoming increasingly common due to the climate crisis. Part of that better care has to do with the reduction in c-sections, which is especially important for Black birthing people who are at a higher risk of being pushed into an unnecessary cesarean, contributing to increased risks.
Even beyond birth, midwives can help with a broad spectrum of care. They can provide more hands-on postpartum care, including helping with nursing and newborn care, during a time that can otherwise be particularly isolating and high-risk. They may offer services such as prescribing birth control and doing pap smears. They can help provide robust sexual education, including to young people that may not have access to it otherwise. Midwives are an integral part of our care system, despite the long history of governments trying to eradicate their work, often fueled directly by white supremacy.
Depending on where you live, the landscape of midwifery may differ. But if you’re in the U.S., one way to help expand access to midwifery is to look into your state’s landscape for midwives. What laws exist regulating midwifery? What does Medicaid reimbursement look like for midwives in your state? What are the requirements for becoming a midwife, and which types of midwives are allowed to practice? What trainings are available, and are there financial barriers that are preventing more midwives from training? Aside from searching the internet, a great way to find out more about your local area/region/state is to make connections with the midwives around you. Get to know them, support their work, and find out more about the barriers they’re seeing in expanding midwifery care. Midwives do so much to help us, and it’s high time we step up to help them, too.
See also: Hawai’i has also attempted to restrict native midwives, which is being challenged.
What’s Happening at Lakeshore Liberation?
Nothing new to share at this time!
What’s Going on in Reproductive Justice
A nurse in Georgia sought medical care for the months of intense headaches she was experiencing but was never tested or given a CT scan that would have revealed the blood clots in her brain causing them. After she was sent home without proper treatment, her boyfriend woke the next morning to her gasping for air and called 911. She was declared brain-dead at the hospital. Now, she is being kept alive without a choice from her family because she happened to be ~eight weeks pregnant at the time. The hospital decided that giving them the option to take her off of the ventilator would violate Georgia’s six-week abortion ban. Put another way, her body is being forcibly used for gestation, regardless of what she or her family might want. The state’s attorney general has said that the law wasn’t intended to force someone’s body to be kept alive if they’re pregnant, but of course, intention doesn’t matter when hospitals have to make decisions amid uncertainty and are more likely to go the most conservative route to avoid legal trouble. As Jezebel points out, this type of situation is expected when it comes to the push for so-called “fetal personhood,” where bodily autonomy for pregnant people comes second to the fetus they’re gestating. Even in places where abortion isn’t currently being prosecuted as a result of these types of fetal personhood laws, they are still ultimately being used as the basis for pushes to ban or restrict abortion and IVF, often incrementally through, “legislatures passing laws saying you can sue for wrongful death when you lose a pregnancy, [or] mandating child support during pregnancy.”
While sudden unexpected infant deaths have been on the rise, recent cuts to the National Institute of Child Health and Human Development have also impacted the Safe to Sleep campaign that they manage. Started in 1994 as “Back to Sleep,” Safe to Sleep focuses on preventing sleep-related infant deaths and has been credited for helping the rapid declines in these deaths since its inception. But since the COVID pandemic started in 2020, they’ve been on the rise again, which experts believe is due to less information getting to parents from health care providers and other sources. The website is still up with a plethora of information, but there’s no telling how long it will remain.
If someone in your life has just started menstruating, #HappyPeriod can help you out with some thoughtful gifts! Why not get them the youth-centered period guide or the workbook that includes a space for period tracking? Better yet, their Period Care Mystery Box includes the workbook and a variety of surprise period care products. Every purchase also supports their FLOW program, which provides, “menstrual health education and safe period products to pre-teens and teens living in underserved communities within Los Angeles county.” A win-win!
The anti-abortion push to prevent people from accessing abortion pills continues, using a litany of junk science and bizarre theories with no basis in reality. At least Texas’ Senate Bill 2880, which would have, “enabled private citizens to sue people who distributed or provided abortion pills in Texas for a minimum of $100,000,” wasn’t picked up for a floor vote, meaning it won’t move forward (for the time being).
I Need an A and If/When/How collaborated to create a comprehensive guide for noncitizens navigating abortion care in an ever-changing landscape. While some of this information is broadly applicable, I really appreciate their work to ensure everyone — regardless of citizenship — is able to get the healthcare they need.
What’s Going on in Wisconsin
You’ve probably heard about the Republican federal budget bill that was passed by the House of Representatives and is headed to the Senate that is filled with measures to strip the most vulnerable people in our country of even more resources (like food assistance, Medicaid, abortion care, and gender-affirming care) to cover tax cuts that disproportionately help the wealthiest people and corporations. WPR has been covering what those impacts would look like in Wisconsin, from a $314 million loss in federal food assistance (affecting the 1/8 of all Wisconsinites who receive SNAP benefits) to increased state spending and decreased Medicaid coverage in the state. Funnily enough, both of our senators oppose it — but while Democratic Senator Tammy Baldwin does so because she’s against the aforementioned impacts on things like food assistance and Medicaid, Republican Senator Ron Johnson only opposes it because the tax changes aren’t sufficiently offset with these cuts and would add to the country’s deficit.
Rethinking Schools used Wisconsin as an example of how school voucher programs quietly siphon off taxpayer dollars meant for public schools to be used on private schools — which often discriminate against queer, trans, and disabled students with no public oversight.
In Pewaukee, dozens of anti-war and pro-Palestine protestors held a rally outside of the Wisconsin Defense Industry Council’s inaugural conference, where WDIC was working to further expand defense spending in Wisconsin to funnel more of our tax dollars into the death machine. Alongside the rally, a die-in took place in the conference room foyer. Two people were arrested, but thanks to the quick action by the rest of the protestors, they were ticketed and released. Many thanks to the Milwaukee Anti-war Committee for calling for this rally and everyone who took part in it!
The Hello Happiness Creativity Center here in Sheboygan has a Teen Club, which offers 50 art project kits each month to teens (13-19) on a first come, first served basis. Did I mention it’s free? Check out their site for a look at past project kits and to get more info!
What I’ve Been Reading
After jumping around between books for a while, I decided to intentionally stick with the only fiction book in my current rotation: book one in the Tomes & Tea series, Can't Spell Treason Without Tea. Admittedly, I was mostly trying to get through it so I could start on the other fiction books I have waiting to be read, but I really enjoyed my first foray into cozy fantasy! While things aren’t exactly low risk in the grander sense (a vengeful queen! dragon attacks! fitting into a new social space!), you just know things are going to work out. I just finished it a few days ago, and it was such a charming read. I’m looking forward to reading the rest of the series soon!
Multiple journalists have been pointing out that the crypto and AI grifts that the current administration is wholeheartedly embracing are sucking up resources that people desperately need while harming the environment and impacting the health of those around their data centers.
What I’m Watching
We just watched Philosophy Tube’s Why We Can’t Build Better Cities video from last year, and it’s so good.
We’ve also been watching Twin Peaks, a show that I’ve only ever seen the original two seasons of and my partner hasn’t seen any of before. We have a box set that includes all kinds of related material, and I’m looking forward to getting the full experience this time!
What I’m Listening To
Code Switch talked to Dr. Andrea Deyrup about how “race science” shows up in medicine and misattributes the effects of racism to race itself.
It’s Been a Minute explored what’s up with all the “buy now, pay later” loan options popping up everywhere online, even on apps like DoorDash, and what it could be signalling.
The Death Panel re-aired another previously-Patreon-only episode from late last year called RFK, Health Capitalism and the Myths of Wellness. As always, they provide insightful analysis of the implications of these wellness grifters being given positions of power.
Two recent episodes from Reveal stuck with me: one where they talked to the executive director of the Yellowhammer Abortion Fund about how they’ve adapted to helping fund abortion care amidst legal threats, and another where they talked to American doctors who have volunteered in Gaza about the horrific trend they’ve seen of children being targeted by soldiers and their push for accountability (and even to be believed).
Places to Donate To, Actions to Take, & Resources to Share
Marcy Rheintgen was arrested in Florida after using the women’s bathroom to wash her hands, because she happens to be trans. Funds are being raised to support her on GiveSendGo1. Please donate and share to help Marcy!
National Bail Out’s annual Mother’s Day campaign may be over, but their work to #FreeBlackMamas is year-round. Donate and uplift their work however you can!
DonorsChoose helps community members fund teachers’ projects and classroom needs that otherwise wouldn’t be covered due to how poorly funded our education system is. Find current projects in Sheboygan to donate to or look for schools in your own area to help teachers help their students!
Care for All is officially opening in June! But they still need community support to help them prepare, which can include donating funds, items on their wishlist, or volunteering if you’re in the Milwaukee area.
A Million Dreamz, the recently-opened child care facility here in Sheboygan, is highlighting our state’s need for increased child care funding in our state budget. As funding from the American Rescue Plan Act ends in June, we desperately need to replace that funding to ensure families have access to quality, affordable care. Check out their page about Raising Wisconsin’s petition calling for increased funding in the state budget.
Onyx Impact created a Digital Green Book to help, “equip the Black community with the knowledge and tools necessary to identify misinformation, protect our families, and make informed decisions in increasingly deceptive online spaces.” It covers a range of topics, from understanding and identifying social media manipulation to helping Black children navigate increasingly racist social media and more. Share it far and wide!
Questions? Comments? Suggestions?
Feel free to share them below or contact me directly.
I verified that this GiveSendGo is legitimate on her TikTok page, where she links to it herself.