“Please wash your hands!”
Tears streamed down Roza’s face as she testified at a public hearing held in West Palm Beach, Florida, on May 12, 2026
A photograph of Mayor Frank Rizzo shaking hands in front of the seal of Philadelphia at City Hall in 1973.
Both are honest responses to the same question, because my view of my world keeps changing.
Why am I afraid of dying? I don’t know. I told a third friend, as she was dropping me off at my apartment after having a cup of coffee, that I was lucky to have met her; she had changed my life; she had changed my view of teaching; she had changed Providence for the better. And, I thanked her, asking: Are you afraid of dying? Do you still live off Hope Street? Does haterization get no toleration on the street where you live?
In the spring of 1973, I worked as a volunteer legal staff member for the ACLU in Philadelphia. One day a week, I staffed the prison visitation program at the Norrington County Jail. If a prisoner thought that his civil rights had been violated, I would spend one afternoon a week meeting with prisoners, listening to their complaints, writing up an evaluation of their complaint.
In the evenings, one night a week, I took a criminology class taught by Finn Hornum — it was me, with my long hair and a beard, three nurses, and some 15 cops, two staties, and the rest city cops from Philadelphia. One of the city cops, knowing that I was a journalist, asked for my help one night during break. His English class was reading Shakespeare, Romeo and Juliet, and he didn’t understand a word of it. I suggested that he and his wife take turns, reading the parts out loud to each other. It worked great, he said, but now, everyone else in the English class was mad at him.
But the impromptu conversation probably saved my life during an altercation with another Philly cop: my friend from class defended me, keeping another cop from busting me up with his nightstick. Being able to cross cultural boundaries with a cop in Philadelphia was a reality that did not happen often.
The history of childbirth in the Western world is not a pretty one. It is a sordid tale of men’s attempts to influence, Jo control and dominate a woman's giving birth, and in effect, remove the responsibility for childbirth from the woman and make it their own.
The horizontal position of birthing, for instance, which replaced the more natural squatting position, became popular at the insistence of King Louis XIV of France, who delighted in watching his many mistresses give birth. The squatting position afforded him a poorer view. When UMass Basketball coach Tom McLaughlin’s wife was forced by an Aprll blizzard into a home delivery, she chose to deliver in a squatting position.
Forceps were developed in the late 1500’s as a profit-making enterprise. Their design and function were kept a secret for generations, passed down from father to son within the inventor’s family. One of the family would be called in to assist at a difficult birth with a strange object under cover. It would be unwrapped under a blanket and used – still under cover – to deliver the baby. For this, he would collect a large fee.
Forceps also marked the beginning of exclusion of midwives from attending births. Forceps were considered a surgical instrument, and women were not allowed to perform surgery.
In the early 1800’s male physicians were responsible for epidemic outbreaks of childbed (puerperal) fever, where mothers died suddenly after giving birth
The doctors transmitted the lethal bacteria as they went from autopsies and handling cadavers to birthing rooms without disinfecting their hands.
It took 50 years before this practice changed. More and more, as the industrial world grew, pregnancy and childbirth were viewed as a state of sickness and disease, and women were encouraged to go to hospitals to deliver their children, and to put themselves in the care of male obstetric physicians.
My story, 44 years later
GREENFIELD, MA. — Mother’s Day, stripped bare of its Hallmark cards and chocolate gooeyness and commercial sales pitch, is a celebration of the natural wonder of giving birth, and gratitude of children towards their Mom (not forgetting, of course, the political origins of Mother’s Day with American suffragettes).
What could be more appropriate, then, than having spent the recent Mother’s Day morning talking with Anne Corrinet and Liza Bathory, the two nurse-midwives with Greenfield OB-GYN Associates who practice at Franklin County Public Hospital?
“It’s a privilege to be there when a child comes into the world, a privilege to be involved in people’s lives that are giving birth,” said Bathory, speaking of her work with almost a religious sense of awe. “Birth is astonishing; it’s never routine.”
“Every woman is different,” Anne Corrinet said, echoing Bathory’s sentiments. “You approach it differently with every client and family, trying to facilitate the environment that suits each family’s needs.”
It’s been just under one year’s time since Anne and Liza were hired as nurse-midwives at Franklin County Public Hospital, two of the 33 CNM’s now licensed and practicing in Massachusetts. A new birthing room has been inaugurated at the hospital, where labor, delivery and recovery all occur in the same room, and the woman can choose whomever she wishes to be present during birth.
Job satisfaction, Anne and Liza say, is something they often get coming out of their ears. And the sense of warmth and professionalism they exude in person comes hack in lavish praise from their patients.
Just ask Ace and Terry Rice of Gill. This Mother’s Day was a special one for Terry, as she returned home from the hospital after giving birth to a son, Ethan, her delivery attended to by Anne. “She was wonderful, just wonderful,” Terry gushed. Terry had had her first child delivered by one of the male physicians, and for her, the differences with her second child being delivered by a nurse-midwife were night and day.
“It’s the other side of the rainbow,” she said. “There was an eye contact that was different than with the guys. A warmer feeling. She couldn’t seem to do enough. You don't want to say the wrong thing to a woman in labor. Anne knew what to say, when to say it, and in a tone that can get through to a woman. Particularly when you feel so vulnerable.”
Our own bodies, our own selves.
As the women’s movement continues to transform much of our society, bringing out not only a consciousness of women asserting control over their own bodies and their own destinies (and allowing the woman that exists in every man to emerge, too), it is only natural that the child-birthing process would become less dominated by these imposed male traditions.
"Pregnancy and birth is a state of health and well-being,” declared Marcia Stahl, a 30-year-old nurse-midwife, working with the Hampden County Medical Group at Wesson Women’s Hospital, part of the Baystate Complex. In 1980, she became the first licensed nurse widwife to gain hospital privileges in western Massachusetts.
“Women wanted to have more control, to be able to participate in the birthing process, to be part of the decision making,” she said, explaining how birthing procedures have changed.
Much of her work, she says, is in enhancing a woman’s natural instincts, and her ability to trust her own body and remove any fears. “The soul of midwifery is in the education of the mother and family to the birthing process. Nurse-midwives personalize the care and provide a continuity.” But Marcia was careful to stress the teamwork of her role in assisting physicians. “I’m an expert in normal pregnancies, and doctors are experts in complications. We work together as a team.”
While the term “midwife” may still bring a snicker to an ignorant few, nurse-midwives undergo rigorous training in their profession. To be certified and licensed as a nurse-midwife, you must have completed a nursing degree, become an RN, and received a graduate degree in midwifery (at present, there is only one midwifery school in New England – at Yale University).
A nurse-midwife is restricted by Massachusetts only to attend births in a hospital or a free-standing birthing center which must be licensed by the board of health. Their status is similar to a nurse-practitioner. Nurse-midwifery has developed a growing professional organization, the American College of Nurse-Midwives, which recently held its 50th anniversary convention in Lexington, Kentucky. There are more than 3,000 nurse-midwives currently practicing in the United States.
In their work as nurse-midwives, both Anne Corrinet and Liza Bathory have said they have encountered no difficulty nor or any roadblocks with either the hospital or physicians in Franklin County, and spoke highly of the existing childbirth education in the county.
"Manna from heaven,” Anne said with a smile, describing the difference between here and South Carolina, where she had to struggle to gain hospital privileges as a nurse-midwife. “Dorothy Telega is very progressive, very forward-thinking,” she said, praising the head nurse of the OB-GYN at Franklin County Public Hospital. “The hospital had already started to change policies before we arrived,” she continued. “The birthing unit concept was already established. The program here is unique. Nurses on the floor go out to the homes on the first and third day post partum. All the people in this area get home visits. We really haven’t had any flak,” she concluded. “Our hospital privileges went through in the first month.”
“We couldn’t have asked for better people to work with,” Liza added.”
Such is not always the situation. At Cooley Dickenson Hospital, for instance, an associate of Marcia Stahl’s, Judie Polger, had to wait almost nine months while the hospital debated whether it had to change its bylaws in order to grant her privileges.
Economics will be an increasingly important factor as the role of nurse-midwives expands within the delivery of health care services. When the nurse-midwives primarly served low-income populations in the urban and rural areas, they were not seen as competition to obstetric physicians. Now, as nurse-midwives become more popular and more accepted, more and more of the patients they see are form the middle class, and there is some tension that they will cut into the practice of established doctors. But most physicians welcome the addition of nurse-midwives for the greater flexibility it gives them. “In general, where midwives go, you see an increased flexibility in the institution, extending the concept of family-centered care,” said one area physician. “An a re-education of the hospital and the physician.
Anne’s husband, Phil, who had been out mowing the lawn, came into the living room and joined the conversation. Liza’s two children had woken up Ann’s son from his nap, and the room had become a beehive of family activity. A corporation sales executive, Phil travels a great amount in his job, and he often finds articles on midwives in newspapers and clips them. “Midwives Feel Persecuted,” read a recent headline from a newspaper in New Jersey. But he was emphatic in his support for his wife and her profession. “Any father who isn’t present at his child’s birth,” he said, “is really missing the boat.” Was their son delivered by a nurse-midwife?
“Of course! We wouldn’t have it any other way!”
That is the way the original story ended. But the emotional testimony of the survivor, Roza, shows that the story has not ended when it comes to survivors of Epstein's abuse. And, the reminder to doctors to please wash their hands, is still good advice.
