Ina May Gaskin - Significance of Her Work

Significance of Her Work

According to Carol Lorente (1995), the work of Gaskin and the midwives might not have had the impact it did, if it hadn't been for the publication of her book Spiritual Midwifery (1977):

"Considered a seminal work, it presented pregnancy, childbirth and breastfeeding from a fresh, natural and spiritual perspective, rather than the standard clinical viewpoint. In homebirth and midwifery circles, it made her a household name, and a widely respected teacher and writer."

Gaskin has been credited with the emergence and popularization of direct-entry midwifery (i.e. not training as a nurse first) in the United States since the early 1970s. Between 1977 and 2000, she published the quarterly magazine Birth Gazette. Ina May’s Guide to Childbirth, her second book about birth and midwifery, was published by Bantam/Dell in 2003. Her books have been published in several languages, including German, Italian, Hungarian, Slovenian, Spanish, and Japanese.

Since the early 1980s, she has been an internationally-known speaker on maternity care independently and for the Midwives Alliance of North America (MANA), lecturing throughout the world to midwives, physicians, doulas, expectant parents and health policy-makers. She has spoken at medical and midwifery schools in several countries and at both the Starwood Festival and the WinterStar Symposium, discussing the history and importance of midwifery.

She is the founder of the Safe Motherhood Quilt Project, a national effort developed to draw public attention to the current maternal death rates, and to honor those women who have died of pregnancy-related causes during the past twenty years.

She has appeared in such prominent films as Ricki Lake's movies Orgasmic Birth (2009) (directed by Debra Pascali-Bonaro) and The Business of Being Born (2008) (directed by Abby Epstein). She also appears in With Women: A Documentary About Women, Midwives and Birth (2006).