ARM Voices Podcast

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Show notes:
In this episode of our 50th anniversary archive series, Elaine Carter talks to ARM co-founder Judy Rogers about a midwifery life spanning two continents and five decades.

• Her 1972 Nova Scotia home birth, after five doctors refused, that set Judy on the path to midwifery, and the births she attended before any formal training
• Direct-entry training at Bolton General Hospital from 1976, in an era of routine shaves, enemas and rising induction following the Peel Report
• The six-weekly student gatherings with Marianne Scruggs and friends, venting, workshops, suturing practice on pieces of meat, that quietly became ARM, and the night in Oxford the name was chosen
• Why “radical” means going back to the roots, and the feminist vision of midwife as facilitator, not hero
• Co-writing The Vision, ARM’s blueprint for woman-centred care and continuity, and her unpublished master’s research on what contributes to midwives seeking autonomy
• Moving to Ontario in 1990, practising pre-legislation, and helping build Canada’s first university midwifery education programme
• Coming out of retirement at 74 to keep her rural Georgian Bay practice alive

Mentioned in this episode:

The Peel Report (1970), which recommended 100% hospital birth in the UK
Flint, C., Poulengeris, P. & Grant, A., The ‘Know Your Midwife’ Scheme — a randomised trial of continuity of care by a team of midwives, Midwifery (1989), 5: 11–16
The Vision: Proposals for the Future of the Maternity Services, Association of Radical Midwives (1986)

Because Midwifery Matters.

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In this episode of our 50th anniversary archive series, Elaine Carter talks to ARM co-founder Marianne Scruggs to uncover what led her to create the community we now call the Association of Radical Midwives.

• How women’s reproductive health work in the US, then a job at London’s Marie Stopes clinic, led her to discover she could become a midwife without first being a nurse
• Training at Sorrento Hospital, Birmingham where learning was by rote, and she was repeatedly pulled into the office for asking too many questions
• The chance conference meeting with Judy Rogers, the spark, and the first 1976 gatherings of eight student midwives sitting on the floor over tea
• A candid look at ARM’s consensus, non-hierarchical model: the deep warmth and care, and the frustration of decisions that wouldn’t hold from one weekend to the next
• Founding MIDIRS out of the early Midwives Information Research Group from a belief that all midwives need to be critical thinkers to be able to read and assess research
• Why she believes ARM must become more activist and work with other groups if midwifery is to survive

Mentioned in this episode:
MIDIRS (Midwives Information and Resource Service) — https://www.midirs.org
The National Perinatal Epidemiology Unit, and the early childbirth meta-analyses led by Iain Chalmers — https://www.npeu.ox.ac.uk
Boston Women’s Health Book Collective, Our Bodies, Ourselves — https://www.ourbodiesourselves.org

Because Midwifery Matters