DATE: Wednesday March 10, 2010

TIME: 6 -8 pm
LOCATION: UIC School of Public Health, Auditorium, Room 109, 1603 W. Taylor Street, Chicago, IL
Handicapped accessible: Rear door to Auditorium
CTA: Pink Line Polk Street stop
Parking: On the street and in the Paulina Street Parking
Structure across Taylor St. between Paulina and Marshfield

For more than 75 years, the Chicago Maternity Center provided safe home births for Chicago mothers. However, when modern medicine’s attitude toward home birth changed and funding from Northwestern University declined in 1974, the center was forced to close. This film interweaves the history of the center with the stories of a young woman about to have her first baby and the center’s fight to stay open in the face of the corporate takeover of medicine.

It’s time to question the benefits of high-cost and high-tech births in hospitals.

Why does it not improve outcomes for mothers or babies? How can we make Illinois a safer place to have a baby? Why does it reduce a woman’s chances to enjoy a healthy, natural birth?

More information: call 312-996-0724 or contact Jaime Klaus, UIC SPH Maternal and Child Health Program (jaimkl@uic.edu)

62 minutes, Kartemquin Films, 1977 The Chicago Maternity Center Story

A panel and open discussion will follow the film
Sabina Dambrauskas, Chicago Chair, Illinois Chapter of the American College of Nurse Midwives
Stacie Geller, G. William Arends Professor in Obstetrics and Gynecology, UIC
Sue Davenport, “The Chicago Maternity Center Story” filmmaker

Co sponsors Chicago Community Midwives; American College of Nurse Midwives; Women and Children First Bookstore

reprinted with permission from Women and Children First

photo credit: Doulas of Greater Kansas City