QUESTIONS: WILL GERMAINE GREER’S LECTURE AT CARDIFF UNIVERSITY ON NOVEMBER 18, 2015 TAKE PLACE, AND IF SO, WILL IT BE WITHOUT DISRUPTION?

WILL MEMBERS OF THE TRANSGENDER COMMUNITY, THROUGH LIES AND DISTORTIONS, BE ABLE TO DESTROY GERMAINE GREER’S REPUTATION, NO MATTER WHAT SHE SAYS? 

Dear Readers:

My assistant, Madison, and I spent several days on the following entry. I realize that it is date and fact-filled, not a casual read.  However, whether we like it or not, a new era is upon us, in which not only are feminists having strong disagreements within ourselves on the issue of whether trans women are women, these disagreements are rancorous. They are tearing us apart.

I believe it is worthwhile to read through this blog entry, and I also believe that opening up each hyperlinks and reading full article is highly educational. 

I am hyperlinking you to Payton Quinn’s article on huffingtonpost.co.uk because she does really get past the name-calling, and states her reason for thinking that “the safety of trans people outweighs the rights of cis women to question the validity of their gender expression.”

Let me hear what you think.

In Sisterhood, Carol Downer

P.S.  Of course, I believe that I do recognize the validity of trans women’s gender expression, I only question that they can appropriate the term “women”.  (I believe that “trans women” is the correct term).

       

         Germaine Greer doesn’t consider post-operative M-to-F transgender people to be women.  She states this opinion forthrightly.  She also makes it clear that in no way does she oppose anyone’s decision to go through the procedure to appear and behave like the gender they identify with, and she will use the gender pronouns each person requests as a courtesy.  Nevertheless, transgender activists call her misogynistic claiming she continually misgenders trans women and denies the existence of transphobia altogether—and many feminists agree with them.  They do not address the key issue: does considering transgender women not to be women constitute bigotry in and of itself?  By the continued misquoting and distortions of Greer’s statements, they destroy her reputation for opinions and statements she’s not made, rather than ever discussing the statements she has made.

            An online controversy erupted after an online petition asked that the speech Greer is scheduled to give at Cardiff University be cancelled.   BBC2’s Newsnight interviewed Greer on October 23^rd, to respond to the petitioner’s charges.    

            My reading of a transcript of the interview shows Germaine Greer does not misgender trans women or express transmisogynistic views.  Despite this, she’s been misquoted and various statements have been incorrectly attributed to her to further attack her. 

Kirsty Wark’s questions create a veritable minefield for Greer to negotiate. Wark clumsily misgenders trans women throughout.  For example, she asks “if a man who is gender reassigned, and outwardly—and he feels, inwardly, he’s a woman--in your view can he be a woman or not?"

            Several online newspapers covered the story, and kept to the facts, ignoring Wark’s inept questions and accurately quoted Greer’s answers.   However, several commentaries in online media and blogs misquote her, others attribute statements to her that she never made.  In none of the attacks, did they address her controversial opinion that men cannot become women through drugs and surgery.  Instead, they put insulting or sarcastic terms and language in Greer’s mouth to characterize her as transmisogynistic.

            Richard Dawkins, an ethologist and an evolutionary biologist, decried the petition in a series of tweets.  He defended open debate at the university.  He was then accused of insulting the transgender community, although my reading of the language of the tweets clearly showed otherwise.

           

The amazing part is that it is possible for anyone to see these misquotes and distortions for themselves, because the disputed language is still online, yet the character assassination continues. So, it has to be asked, are the detractors so angry that their rational faculties have deserted them?  Or, do they assume that no one will go back and check for the accuracy of their statements?  Or, have the lines in the sand been drawn so deeply on this issue that the author assumes their audience will just read the headline and skip through to the “juicy parts” not caring if the statement is accurate?

            RICHARD DAWKINS DID NOT SAY THAT THOSE WHO DISAGREE WITH GERMAINE GREER SHOULD NOT BE AT UNIVERSITY

            Amy Walker, on October 26, 2015, starts her article, “Richard Dawkins Insults Transgender Community” by copying a series of Richard Dawkins’ tweets.  One tweet:  “Students who suppress a distinguished scholar’s lecture because they disagree with her have no place in a university.” (online article on Planettransgender.com)  She then comments, “Yes, a university may not be a ‘safe space’, but to claim that people who disagree with a ‘distinguished scholar’ should not be at university is farcical….” 

            Dawkins not only did not claim that people who disagree should not be at university, he said the opposite.  His other tweet said, “Those who think it’s nonsense are entitled to stay away.  Or come and argue.  They should not censor views they think are nonsense.”

           

            Amy Walker either cannot read accurately, or her strong feelings are blinding her; otherwise, why would she display her own bias by running his actual statements right next to her distorted version of his statement for all to read?

            And what about Planettransgender.com?  Are articles reviewed to check for blatant errors?

GERMAINE GREER DID NOT REFER TO CAITLYN JENNER AS “HE/SHE” 

           

          In my experience, the use of the term, “he/she”, is derogatory.  In the U.S., if Greer used this term in her interview with Kirsty Wark on BBC’s Newsnight, she would definitely be called out by feminists. But, did she do so?  My reading of Wark’s question that preceded her statement, and her full reply casts doubt on the charge that she used the term “he/she”.

          In the “Amateur” transcript by commenter eigensprocket:UK that I read, Greer utters these syllables in response to the following question from Kirsty Wark: “But are people, you would say necessarily, born a woman, or born feeling female.  And if he feels more female..? (OPENS HANDS QUESTION GESTURE)…"

Wark’s question is unintelligible to me.  Is she referring to “people” or to “he”?

          Greer answers Wark’s earlier question about what Greer thinks about Jenner being considered for an award for being Glamour magazine's woman of the year.  She continues Wark’s use of “he” and then shifts over to “she” and refers to “other female members of the family”.   “It seems to me that he…that, ah, what was going on there is that he…he/she…ah, wanted the limelight that the other female members of the family were enjoying….”

          Omitting punctuation marks, Greer said three pronouns in a row; “he”, then “he” again and then “she”.  The transcriber uses “…” several times to indicate that Greer momentarily paused between these pronouns, and then paused between them and the rest of the sentence.  The transcriber’s slash creates the term he/she, even though the rest of the sentence shows she accepted Jenner’s self-definition as one of the female members of the family.

          Greer stated earlier in the interview that she would use the pronouns that a transgendered person wants as a courtesy.  Reviewing the context shows that Greer rebounded from a poorly-framed question to refer to Jenner using female pronouns and included her among her female relatives.

            On October 27^th, Kate Lyons’ commentary on Theguardian.com repeated the charge that Germaine Greer misgendered Jenner by “referring to her as he/she.  Lyons presumably was relying on a excerpt from the Guardian’s transcript of the BBC2’s Newsnight interview in Damien Gayle’s October 24th Guardian Article which didn’t include Kirsty Wark’s question, nor Greer’s twice-uttered “he”.  (Note: this transcript was not available online)

GERMAINE GREER DID NOT SAY THAT CAITLYN JENNER, TRANSGENDER WOMEN ARE NOT ‘REAL WOMEN’

            October 25^th, online magazine, jezebel.com ran Stassa Edwards commentary on Greer’s BBC2’s Newsnight.  The headline “Germaine Greer Says Caitlyn Jenner, Transgender Women Are Not ‘Real Women’. 

            According to the transcript I viewed, Greer did not make that statement on BBC2’s Newsnight, nor was there any discussion of any prior statement that transwomen were not “real women.” And, if she ever made such a statement, Damien Gayle didn’t mention it in his Guardian article, October 24, which Edwards’ cited as her source, “Caitlyn Jenner ‘wanted limelight of female Kardashians’- Germaine Greer, htttp://www.theguardian.com/books/2015/Oct/24/caitlyn-jenner-wanted-limelight-of-female-kardashians-germaine-greer.

DOES GREER THINK THAT TRANSGENDER WOMEN ARE NOT PROPER WOMEN

            Edwards’ disinformation about Greer’s comment that transgender women are not ‘real’ women is adopted by Kaite Welsh in her commentary in the online Telegraph newspaper to jazz up her characterization of Greer’s opinion.  Actually, Greer simply said they are not women.

            Cardiff University is not withdrawing its invitation.  Germaine Greer has agreed to speak.  Considering the intemperate and inaccurate statements made by Greer’s critics so far, I wonder if the event will come off.  Also, if she does appear on November 18, which is 2 days before Transgender Day of Remembrance and within Trans Awareness Week, I wonder if she will encounter protest similar to the “glitter bombing” of March 14, 2012.

  

ANOTHER SECOND-WAVE FEMINIST REFUSES TO BE SILENCED BY TRANSGENDER CRITICS

By Carol Downer

          I applaud Germaine Greer speaking the truth. She says it’s fine if men choose to use drugs and surgery to alter their bodies to feel more comfortable by having a female appearance, and she accords them the courtesy of using female speechforms, but it doesn’t mean that they now belong to the class of women.  So, trans women, and their supporters, go ahead and call me scurrilous names and mount your campaigns to deny me any means to publicly express my opinion.   This is the time for all women that want to preserve the gains of our women’s liberation movement to follow Greer’s example and speak out.  As ACT UP! said, “Silence is Death”.

 You ask, why can’t everyone accept them as being women, if they so identify?  Trans women have not had the experience of being a girl or woman their whole life, so they do not have that deep bond that women have which is based on our capacity to reproduce the species; they have not been, are not presently and never will be, targets of those ruling class males who either favor or oppose population growth.   Therefore, the male-dominated society will not accept them as women; in fact, many trans women are being beaten up and killed by sexist males for making their outer appearance congruent with their self-definition.   Their assailants are saying, in essence, “we men have the power to decide who is or is not a woman”.  And, though some liberal left men are probably getting a kick out seeing feminists being de-platformed and taking their turn at being called bigots, ruling class men knows that the chief definition of women in patriarchal society is that they are inferior, and they will use their power to keep treating us that way.  Since the patriarchy’s main goal is to control women’s power to reproduce, the activities of gender non-conforming people do not bother them since only a minority of them sire, gestate and rear children.

The debate about how to define “woman” is a sideshow, because it is based on the assumption that we ordinary people define “woman” through our daily actions.   Paradoxically, the trans gender community preach that gender is a social construct, but they do not analyze who is responsible for this social construct and how it is enforced, and by whom.  Instead, they attack a woman who criticizes the male power structure responsible for the gender stereotypes that oppress women and trans women.

In today’s world, the media, the internet and the public pronouncements of the major political parties reflect back to us a picture of a society in which we collectively create the social construct of gender, therefore, since we collectively create it, it is presumed that we can change it by changing public opinion.  Actually, this social construct is a result of what’s taught in our educational institutions, what’s preached from religious pulpits, what’s enforced by laws and regulations in every phase of our lives.  Our country is ruled by the 1% who own the corporations using control of the media, philanthropy, lobbying, and institutions.  They can’t change the underlying physiological difference between males and females.   The population is dimorphic; everyone fits, more or less, into either male or female plus an increasing population of people that are intersex.  However, they can decide whether our society is binary, meaning everyone if forced to be either a man or a woman. If we want to challenge the tyranny of these rigid binary gender roles, and feminists do, we women have to unite as a class, to collectively rebel.  Trans gendered people and men can be allies and support our struggle.

So, I will never deny Caitlyn Jenner the right to identify as a trans woman (although she is not my favorite trans woman, because she is anti-abortion and anti-poor people), but I will disagree with her defining herself as a woman, thus pulling the rug out of the definition that a woman is an adult female human, and thus destroying my ability to establish common ground with other adult female humans.

Of course, trans women and we women have some common male enemies, violent men who enforce the patriarchal definition of women by assaulting or killing any man who dares to undermine male superiority by behaving like a woman and the members of the White, Male Supremacist ruling class.  Instead of fighting feminists, trans women would be wise to become allies of politically active adult female humans who are working for social justice for all.

         

          I say thank you, Germaine Greer, for these candid, articulate statements.   Her courageous decision to speak out on this “third-rail” issue may prove to bring more inspiration to the ranks of feminist women like me, than what she would have said in her address. 

Carol Downer introduced the concept of vaginal self-examination in 1971 and co-founded the Feminist Women’s Health Center in 1972.  She is the editor and/or co-author of several books, including a “New View of a Woman’s Body.”

Doctors called midwives "untrained and dirty" on "60 Minutes"

YouTube Title: Gates Foundation: Giving A Fortune Away 
Time: 13 minute segment
Date Aired: October 2010 

"...It found that, by tradition, childbirth is considered unclean here. Babies are often left on dirt floors, uncovered, while the mother is tended to first. The foundation tested solutions, trained health care workers to use sterilized tools and taught the mothers to keep the babies warm; simple, inexpensive ideas that have reduced deaths here by half..."

Doctor's traditional way of eliminating independent midwifery, has been to call midwives untrained and dirty. Melinda and Bill Gates blame the high infancy death rate in India on midwives not sterilizing their instruments and leaving newborn babies on the dirt floor, because birth is "dirty".

The Gates new $1.5 billion program seeks to create millions of midwives, but under whose control will these midwives be? And how many babies will be "risked out" to go to hospitals to get high-tech medical care which generally ends up being C-sections or episiotomies and bottle-fed infants. See this 12 minute interview with Melinda Gates to witness this vicious attack on midwives--blaming them for the high death rate--not extreme poverty, and patriarchal oppression.

Gates Foundation: Giving A Fortune Away

 

Video Transcript:

SCOTT PELLEY (voiceover): The north of India, where it is a short drive from the big city to the Middle Ages. In the countryside of India`s most crowded state, Uttar Pradesh, often, food is scarce, electricity nonexistent, women and infants die in childbirth, and medicine remains in the realm of superstition. It`s exactly what Melinda Gates is looking for-- a neglected crisis where her investment can save the most lives.

MELINDA GATES: Our belief is that all lives, no matter where they`re lived on the globe, have equal value, all lives.

SCOTT PELLEY: What are you global priorities?

MELINDA GATES: HIV/AIDS, malaria, mother-and-child deaths, in that order.

SCOTT PELLEY: Why those?

MELINDA GATES: When you looked at where the largest number of deaths were on the planet, they were from things like AIDS, malaria, and these childhood deaths. And nobody was giving voice to them. And no one was really tackling them. So, we said systematically, "Those are places that we want to go and work."

What kind of decisions have you all made that have impacted the village?

SCOTT PELLEY (voiceover): It might be occurring to you right about now that you haven`t seen the world`s richest woman before. She`s not the type to stand on a red carpet with million-dollar earrings. Melinda Gates, forty- six years old from Dallas, is a former Microsoft executive who managed eight hundred people in software development and marketing. Now, the work of the foundation is her obsession. This isn`t a photo-op. In fact, it took us a year to convince her to let us come along. She travels often, probing for facts, analyzing needs, measuring the misery.

MELINDA GATES: I have to be here. To see it, and to feel it, and to understand, you know, what motivates these people. What is it that they`re doing for their livelihood? Unless I see it and feel it and touch it, I just don`t feel like I can do the foundation justice in terms of what we`re trying to accomplish.

Oh, she`s gorgeous.

SCOTT PELLEY (voiceover): What she`s trying to accomplish here is saving lives at birth. In India alone, one million babies die every year before they`re a month old.

Because I wonder which ladies in this audience have lost a child shortly after childbirth? Oh, look at that. One, two, three, four, five, six, seven, eight, nine, ten, eleven, twelve, thirteen, fourteen, fifteen, sixteen. It`s a common experience in this village.

(voiceover) This is a great example of exactly how the foundation works. The foundation poured money into research to understand the problem. It found that, by tradition, childbirth is considered unclean here. Babies are often left on dirt floors, uncovered, while the mother is tended to first. The foundation tested solutions, trained health care workers to use sterilized tools and taught the mothers to keep the babies warm; simple, inexpensive ideas that have reduced deaths here by half. Part of the foundation`s strategy is to team up with governments and other charities to make the money go farther and spread the best ideas.

MELINDA GATES: These deaths of children under five have come down substantially; 1960 it was twenty million children under the age of five that died. Now it`s nine million children. That`s still too many.

SCOTT PELLEY: A year.

MELINDA GATES: A year. Every year, nine million children die. We can get that down.

And as for those other priorities she mentioned, the foundation is working on a vaccine for HIV and nothing less than the eradication of malaria and polio, taking on everything at once.

MELINDA GATES: Part of what you`re doing--

SCOTT PELLEY (voiceover): Melinda Gates is analytical and driven, not unlike her husband. She likes hard facts, strict accounting, and expects everyone around her to measure up--very much the CEO.

MELINDA GATES: What has been the thing that women are most reluctant to change?

SCOTT PELLEY (voiceover): She talks about spending a billion here, a billion there, and pretty soon you realize that billionaire philanthropists aren`t like you and me. There was a funny moment when she was going through some of the figures and in an uncharacteristic slip she said she`d pledged one billion to vaccines when it`s actually ten billion.

You know, it just occurred to me you had misplaced nine billion dollars. Now, I misplace change at the end of the day. But you had actually forgotten about nine billion dollars.

MELINDA GATES: I think I missed a zero in there.

SCOTT PELLEY: Most people would remember that kind of a number.

MELINDA GATES: You know, I-- for me, I think more about the possibility of what it is we`re trying to change. So, if I have to go around the health statistics in the world, I don`t tend to get those wrong. But the amount of dollars we put in, I am always more focused on what`s the result we`re going to get, no matter how much money we`ve put into the issue.

SCOTT PELLEY: Now I`m from Texas too, so I can say this: You don`t wear your wealth like a Dallas gal. You don`t seem to be a big consumer of jewelry and cosmetics.

MELINDA GATES: I don`t find great joy in those things. I find much more joy in connecting with people. I`m much more at home being what I call out on the ground, doing this work. And for me, that`s where I find meaning. I don`t find meaning in-- in material things.
 
SCOTT PELLEY (voiceover): This village had nothing material to give but music.

You know it`s a long way from Microsoft.

MELINDA GATES: I like this a whole lot better.

SCOTT PELLEY: Do you?

(voiceover) Seven thousand miles away, back home in Seattle, the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation is building its new headquarters. There are eight hundred and fifty employees figuring out which science or development projects are worthy. And listen to what they have spent already: four and a half billion for vaccines; almost two billion for scholarships in America; and a billion and a half to improve farming in Africa and Asia, just to name a few. The foundation`s wealth ranks up there with America`s biggest companies, just behind McDonald`s and ahead of Boeing.

Boy, his and hers offices. I`m not sure a lot of marriages would survive this.

BILL GATES: Oh, it works out great.

MELINDA GATES: We actually like it a lot.

SCOTT PELLEY (voiceover): The Gates live in a secluded hi-tech mansion with three children. This is an early picture. The kids are now eight, eleven, and fourteen. Bill and Melinda met at a Microsoft meeting twenty-three years ago.

What did you think? I mean, it`s not everyday a girl gets asked out by the richest man in the world?

MELINDA GATES: Oh, no, it wasn`t that, it was that I didn`t think it was a very good idea to date the CEO of the company.

SCOTT PELLEY (voiceover): It was back in 1993 on a vacation in Africa that they began to think about giving away their money.

BILL GATES: Well, if you have money, what are you going to do with it? You can spend it on yourself, you can have, you know, thousands of people holding fans and cooling you off. You can build pyramids and things. You know, I sometimes order two cheeseburgers instead of one. But we-- we didn`t have any consumption ideas. And if you don`t think it`s a favor to your kids to have them start with-- with gigantic wealth, then you`ve got to pick a cause.

SCOTT PELLEY: You don`t consider it to be a favor to your kids?

MELINDA GATES: No, absolutely not. We think--

SCOTT PELLEY: To give them enormous wealth?

MELINDA GATES: No, they should go on to pursue whatever it is they want to do in life and not feel cheated by that by being given something, given a whole lot of wealth. They would-- they would never go out and figure out who they are and what their potential is.

SCOTT PELLEY: Have you talked to them about this? Have you said, look, we`re going to give most of this way?

MELINDA GATES: Absolutely.

SCOTT PELLEY: And they`re okay with giving the money away.

MELINDA GATES: They are okay with it.

BILL GATES: Yes, they reach different ages, they may ask us again, "Tell me again, What? Why?"

SCOTT PELLEY (voiceover): The Gates` kids will still be massively wealthy. But their parents have already given roughly thirty billion to the foundation and they told us they`ll give ninety percent of their money away. Add to that the contribution of the Gates` close friend, Warren Buffett, who has committed another thirty billion to the foundation. This past summer, the Gates and Buffett challenged billionaires to give half of their wealth to the charity of their choice. So far forty have signed the pledge.
 
The foundation, you, have made certain choices about what you`re going to fund. And some people might ask, "Why not drop thirty billion dollars on a cure for cancer," for example?

BILL GATES: Well, there`s a huge market for cancer drugs. And there`s dozens of pharmaceutical companies that spend tens of billions on those drugs. In malaria, when we announced a grant for fifty million, we became the biggest private funders. And so, the fact that it kills over million children a year and yet has almost no money given to it, you know, that struck us as-- as very strange. But it became the thing we saw, "Okay, this will be unique. We`ll take the diseases of the poor, where there`s no market and we`ll get the best scientists working on those diseases."

SCOTT PELLEY: You`re trying to find the places where the money will have the most leverage, how you can save the most lives for the dollar, so to speak.

BILL GATES: Right. And transform the societies.

WOMAN: Good morning.

SCOTT PELLEY (voiceover): Another society they want to transform is America`s, particularly through the schools. They have pledged nearly one quarter of all the foundation money to American students. And we followed Melinda to the Friendship Collegiate Academy High School in Washington, DC.

I wonder what you think is the most alarming thing about American education?

MELINDA GATES: I think it`s most alarming that we`re only preparing a third of the kids to go on to college. That`s a frightening thing for our democracy to say a third of kids are prepared to go.

SCOTT PELLEY (voiceover): If only a third of high school seniors are academically prepared to go to college, the Gates believe that a revolution in teaching can go a long way to pushing that up to their goal of eighty percent. They`re funding research to figure out what makes great teachers great.

MELINDA GATES: Do you feel like you`re prepared? That you could go on and succeed in college?

CHILDREN (in unison): Yes.

SCOTT PELLEY (voiceover): The foundation is at work in schools in nearly all fifty states. Sort of like "national parents," Bill and Melinda Gates have helped pay college tuition for twenty thousand American kids.

BILL GATES: The country is built on ingenuity. It`s built on having lots of very well-educated people. And if you were from a poor family, how are you going to be break out of that? Well, education is the only way. Education is the thing that twenty years from now, will determine if this country is as strong and as just as it wants to be.

SCOTT PELLEY (voiceover): One of the boldest efforts of the foundation is unfolding in the slums that we visited in Delhi, an attempt to eradicate polio. No one in America has seen this since the 1960s. We found, in a Delhi hospital, a polio ward full of paralyzed children.

MAN: This young boy, Sahil. He is ten years old. Sahil has got paralysis of one side of his body, one leg. See what he`s doing, he`s trying his best, he`s bringing his hand, but he cannot move his leg.

SCOTT PELLEY (voiceover): In a country where water often runs next to sewage, the virus, which is spread through human waste, finds new victims. Polio has been cornered to just four countries on Earth, so the Gates have teamed with Rotary International to bang on every door to find the last child who hasn`t tasted the vaccine.

Do you believe you can do that, actually eradicate the virus from the face of the Earth?

MELINDA GATES: It`s been done with smallpox. And that`s what gives us the hope and the belief.

SCOTT PELLEY (voiceover): While in India, we were invited to a ceremony that every new mother prays for. Because so many newborns die, they`re not given names right away. This family had waited a week to bring their daughter into the light and name her "Durga," which means "Invincible." It was during the ceremony that we saw what it was that has moved a no- nonsense executive to give away her fortune.

MELINDA GATES: Can I hold her? Oh.

SCOTT PELLEY (voiceover): Durga`s first blessing was from the sun. Then she received a second, a future free of polio.

Birthing Our Babies!

ANNOUNCING THE

RELEASE of:

WOMEN'S HEALTH IN WOMEN'S HANDS

"BIRTHING OUR BABIES" 

www.womenshealthinwomenshands.org/BirthingOurBabies.html

It's been over a year since this project began and Carol Downer has attended a lot of workshops, conferences, and met many incredible people.  This webpage is for all who have contributed their thoughts, energy, and criticisms; and it is also a celebration of the amazing work done by those in the past - including the sometimes under appreciated work of the Feminist Women's Health Center.

Women's Health in Women's Hands decided to include a full PDF version of the Feminist Classic "Woman-Centered Pregnancy and Birth" by Ginny Cassidy-Brinn, R.N., Francie Hornstein, and Carol Downer - Illustrations by Suzann Gage.  It is now available for anybody to read and share with others.  And as stated on the webpage: "Although the books information is correct - over the interfering years, doctors have invented new technology and have found other reasons to promote intervention that need to be carefully evaluated by the woman; and we are contemplating adding new information.  We appreciate any input you may have - we will be working on a version of this book that can be edited...So please let us hear from you!"

For all who think and know that having people 'choose their birth attendant and the place to give birth' is essential:

• Forward this message
• Post on your BLOG
• Include the NEW Birthing Our Babies hyperlink to your website
• Post on all social networks (twitter, facebook, etc.)
• Write a review - especially of "Woman-Centered Pregnancy and Birth" 

And make sure to keep posted - because there is more to come.

Women's Health in Women's Hands

www.womenshealthinwomenshands.org