“The Satisfactory Midwife Bag”: Midwifery Regulation in South Carolina, Past and Present Considerations (2014)
This study examines regulatory efforts directed toward black midwives in South Carolina in the early twentieth century as evidenced within the state's Board of Health documents. Using qualitative content analysis and Abbott (1988) and Starr's (1982) discussion of the medico-legal relationship between doctors and the legal profession, I critically examine South Carolina's Sanitary Codes in order to discern the temporal nature of midwifery law in the early twentieth century. I argue that the language within these legislative stipulations governing granny midwives become more restrictive over time in the early twentieth century thanks to antimidwifery advocacy by US physicians and health officials. Further, I demonstrate how the South Carolina State Board of Health ensured that grannies operated appropriately using other black women as midwifery supervisors. This study illustrates how despite the lack of universal laws governing midwifery in the United States in the early twentieth century, South Carolina actively engaged in “rounding up” the midwife using state-appointed midwifery supervisors, increasingly restrictive practice stipulations, and mandatory midwifery training seminars. This research was supported by a Doctoral Dissertation Enhancement Grant and Fellowship.
...MoreSimilar Citations
Book
Anthony Ryan Hatch;
(2016)
Blood Sugar: Racial Pharmacology and Food Justice in Black America
(/isis/citation/CBB245142743/)
Thesis
Adam Biggs;
(2021)
The Newest Negroes: Black Doctors and the Desegregation of Harlem Hospital, 1919-1935
(/isis/citation/CBB359279927/)
Article
Patterson, Andrea;
(2009)
Germs and Jim Crow: The Impact of Microbiology on Public Health Policies in Progressive Era American South
(/isis/citation/CBB000932225/)
Book
Fraser, Gertrude Jacinta;
(1998)
African American Midwifery in the South: Dialogues of Birth, Race, and Memory
(/isis/citation/CBB000771253/)
Book
Nelson, Alondra;
(2011)
Body and Soul: The Black Panther Party and the Fight against Medical Discrimination
(/isis/citation/CBB001251125/)
Article
Segrest, Mab;
(2014)
Exalted on the Ward: “Mary Roberts,” the Georgia State Sanitarium, and the Psychiatric “Speciality” of Race
(/isis/citation/CBB001201824/)
Article
Cavalcanti, Juliana Manzoni;
Maio, Marcos Chor;
(2011)
Entre negros e miscigenados: a anemia e o traço falciforme no Brasil nas décadas de 1930 e 1940
(/isis/citation/CBB001420521/)
Thesis
Roberts, Samuel Kelton;
(2002)
Infectious fear: Tuberculosis, public health, and the logic of race and illness in Baltimore, Maryland, 1880--1930
(/isis/citation/CBB001562176/)
Article
Wangui Muigai;
(2019)
"Something Wasn't Clean": Black Midwifery, Birth, and Postwar Medical Education in All My Babies
(/isis/citation/CBB729992204/)
Book
Jonathan M. Metzl;
(2020)
Étouffer la révolte: La psychiatrie contre les Civils Rights, une histoire du contrôle social
(/isis/citation/CBB840020850/)
Book
Farber, Paul Lawrence;
(2011)
Mixing Races: From Scientific Racism to Modern Evolutionary Ideas
(/isis/citation/CBB001033410/)
Book
Mab Segrest;
(2020)
Administrations of Lunacy: Racism and the Haunting of American Psychiatry at the Milledgeville Asylum
(/isis/citation/CBB644941122/)
Article
Yulonda Eadie Sano;
(2019)
“Protect the Mother and Baby”: Mississippi Lay Midwives and Public Health
(/isis/citation/CBB301228659/)
Article
Benjamin Baker;
(2020)
Death by Wasting Away: The Life, Last Days, and Legacy of Lucy Byard
(/isis/citation/CBB026389352/)
Book
Green, Laurie B.;
Mckiernan-González, John Raymond;
Summers, Martin Anthony;
(2014)
Precarious Prescriptions: Contested Histories of Race and Health in North America
(/isis/citation/CBB001553443/)
Article
Doyle, Dennis;
(2009)
“A Fine New Child”: The Lafargue Mental Hygiene Clinic and Harlem's African American Communities, 1946--1958
(/isis/citation/CBB000930501/)
Article
Keith Wailoo;
(2020)
Spectacles of Difference: The Racial Scripting of Epidemic Disparities
(/isis/citation/CBB687253716/)
Book
Anne Pollock;
(2021)
Sickening: Anti-Black Racism and Health Disparities in the United States
(/isis/citation/CBB548925523/)
Book
Humphreys, Margaret;
(2008)
Intensely Human: The Health of the Black Soldier in the American Civil War
(/isis/citation/CBB000774696/)
Article
Crenner, Christopher;
(2012)
The Tuskegee Syphilis Study and the Scientific Concept of Racial Nervous Resistance
(/isis/citation/CBB001250116/)
Be the first to comment!