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Health policies need to stop marginalizing Indigenous midwives – IRPP

June 11, 2024

A radical shift is needed to recognize midwifery’s ability to provide sexual and reproductive care beyond pregnancy needs.

Outdated policies still prevent registered midwives – especially Indigenous midwives – from practising fully in British Columbia. That excludes their knowledge, skills and experience from the larger health-care context, preventing them from working with primary-care teams and allied health practitioners.

Canada failed to recognize and regulate midwives until the 1990s, choosing instead to sideline them and create barriers to their legitimate practice. The last such restrictions were finally lifted in Prince Edward Island just this year.

Even though midwives are now legally permitted to work in Canada, health policies marginalize the profession by not recognizing how midwifery can help clients with sexual and reproductive health needs beyond pregnancy alone.

This is most evident in Indigenous families, who continue to suffer from attempts by government agencies to suppress access to community care for Indigenous women and their babies through pregnancy, birth and into the postpartum period, for instance by forcing them to travel to get access to contraception, sexually transmitted infection (STI) testing and basic prenatal care.

Read More: https://policyoptions.irpp.org/magazines/june-2024/indigenous-midwives/

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