Claudine Schalk: “Midwives have the right to be recognized for their work and services”

dThe last column of the years has been published The the world, Israel Nisand, professor emeritus of obstetrics and gynecology and former president of the French National College of Gynecologists and Obstetricians (Cngof), takes the right to speak for midwives. (“We don’t have enough midwives to deliver babies today” the world on July 27).

With the current hospital shortage of midwives questioning the closure of maternity hospitals and the conversion of others into maternity factories in France, he intends to make them guilty of only thinking of their comfort. “rights” than theirs ” homework “.

According to him, because they choose to work as liberals, that’s what happens. He intends to impose a medical and patriarchal order on them with this sentence: “Midwives should be required to practice for a minimum amount of time what they were trained for (…). Let’s create an in-house internship for midwives twice in six months in two different maternity hospitals, with a total amount of up to 2000 euros provided by the state. »

Clearly, Israel Nissan is in the wrong era and the wrong mandate. The time is truly over when a male obstetrician-gynecologist chaired the National Board of the Order of Midwives from 1945 to 1995. Similarly, the midwife responsible for teaching at the midwifery school was subject to the authority of such a doctor until 2016. While the quality of media medical acts, identical to these doctors, was recognized as equivalent by Medicare only in 2016. For a long time any professional equality.

Professional monopoly

The current situation, which midwives have constantly condemned, is the result of perinatal reforms, where the authorities since the 1970s have relied mainly on the expertise of obstetricians and gynecologists to guide their policies in this area, as recalled by sociologists in a 2021 report on behalf of the National Observatory of Health Professions Demography.

Obstetricians and gynecologists have been able to promote a professional monopoly on pregnancy as potentially pathological and childbirth inherently risky, as Israel Nisand himself defined in a 1998 journal article. Obstetrics records: ” Childbirth can be considered normal only two hours after birth. » It is necessary to be present every time “Permanent staff of midwife, obstetrician-anesthetist and pediatrician”. Moreover, monitoring of a woman’s reproductive and sexual health can only be within the competence of a doctor.