Midwifery Gone Wrong

Jennifer Williams a fifty-four year old woman from Bloomington, Indiana, pleaded guilty to a felony count of unlicensed midwifery and will recieve a year's probation. Indiana, along with nine other states prohibit midwifery by anyone but doctors and nurses. Last year, a baby delivered by Williams died, but she was not charged in the death.


Ninteenth century medical schools discovered Pasteur's theory of infectious diseases, Holmes' and Semmelweis' work on puerperal fever, and Lister's writings on antisepsis. Since midwives worked informally they did not take these new advances in medicine and hygiene into effect. The practices of these "primitive" midwives began to directly contrast recent innnovations in "modern" remedies. People began to notice the difference in numbers of maternal and neonatal deaths from "ancient" midwives and "modern" physicians. The difference between statistical outcomes of midwives and physicians in the United States precipitated a situation in health care characterized as the "midwifery problem". The midwifery controversy lasted from approximately the end of the 19th century through the first two decades of the following century. Although the concern about neonatal and maternal outcomes has been named as the major causative agent for the controversy, other historians have also suggested alternative factors.