Birth Allowed Radio

In this episode, Cristen speaks with an experienced Labor & Delivery nurse about the obstetric violence she has witnessed and even participated in ("I’ve seen doctors pry women’s legs apart with their elbows… I’ve seen doctors check people [vaginally] while the women were saying, ‘no,’ ...").

She also talks about advocating to change a patriarchal system ("I truly believe that the women in any given community have way more power than they realize. [They] can take over if they really put their minds to it.")

In this episode, Cristen speaks with "J," an Indiana mother who recorded the meeting with her hospital about a non-consented procedure during labor that the hospital defended as "appropriate" and "part of" routine care. We'll hear the recording of the meeting, as well as the professional opinions of respected legal and medical experts on why the hospital's defense is dead wrong.

In this episode, Cristen speaks with Zawn Villines, lead organizer of the community effort to push back on Dekalb Medical's policies involving childbirth options and rights and their decision to push out a midwifery practice and doctor known for respecting patient decisions. Katie Kissel, a local mother, shares her surprise at discovering that the head of obstetrics at Dekalb as these events transpired is the same doctor who laughed at her birth plan and gave her an episiotomy without consent during the birth of her first child.

In this episode, Cristen speaks with an obstetrician who saw her practice's Cesarean rates drop after they implemented a feminist model--putting women in charge of their own medical decisions. She also discusses her own job-related trauma and medicine's blame culture.

In this episode, Cristen speaks with an Alabama doula about how her clients are treated in a maternity care system that is improving slowly, but still characterized by paternalism and a resistance to change. **TRIGGER WARNING** for description of assault of a laboring woman

In this episode, perhaps the most experienced midwifery law lawyer in the U.S. talks about why midwives need lawyers, as well as the David vs. Goliath struggles of families fighting hospital and medical lobbies for the right to maternity care outside of hospitals. BONUS: That time she was one of the first women lawyers to argue (and win!) a case before the U.S. Supreme Court.

In this episode, a doula based out of New York City talks about the abuse she experiences and witnesses as she supports clients during childbirth.

In this episode, Lexington, KY, couple Helen & Kris Nonn describe the home birth of their son, born "illegally" with Certified Professional Midwives, and talk about why they made that choice for his birth.

In this episode, Cristen talks with Mary Carol Akers, a certified nurse midwife who has been fighting local hospitals for years to open an independent birth center in Kentucky; Mary Kathryn Delodder, the head of the consumer coalition working to legalize out-of-hospital midwifery in Kentucky; and a Central Kentucky couple who was turned away from two hospitals *while the mother was in labor* for wanting to have a vaginal birth after Cesarean.