DVD 1: Down on The Farm: Conversations with Legendary Midwife Ina May Gaskin
Executive Producer Ricki Lake and Director Abby Epstein travel to The Farm Community in Summertown, Tennessee to speak with pioneer midwife Ina May Gaskin. Getting to be a fly on the wall during this visit is a wonderful, enlightening experience. I learned a great deal in a short amount of time while watching this DVD. Ina May Gaskin is simply put, a genius when it comes to labor and delivery, and listening to her speak candidly on the topic was a voyeuristic treat. Passion and knowledge infuse every word she speaks, and the video features sequences of Q and A with the midwives at The Farm, covering hot topics including labor induction, ultrasound, and the cocktail of drugs many women receive during labor and delivery. What struck me as the most fascinating was the discussion that Autism may be linked to ultrasound and drug interventions during pregnancy and childbirth, and that of the 2,500 babies delivered naturally on The Farm, none are on the Autism spectrum (and as a sidenote, they also mentioned that no Autism has ever been reported in Amish communities). Ina May Gaskin also poses important questions: "Why do the insurance companies get to be the boss of birth?" And she offers, "I think we need to put a higher value on our mother's lives, and then when we do that, automatically you're going to have a safer health care system."
