PRESS RELEASE (for immediate release) September 26 2002

VANCOUVER MIDWIFE, GLORIA LEMAY, TO BE HONOURED BY ONTARIO WOMEN’S GROUP

Vancouver birth attendant Gloria Lemay was released from jail last week after serving two months for criminal contempt of court. The day after her release, she won the “Women’s Voice Award” from CHOICES Childbirth Education and Doula Services of Ontario for her services to women during the childbearing years.

“On behalf of CHOICES Childbirth Education and Doula Services, I am proud to inform you that you are the winner of this year's Women’s Voice Award. You received a record setting number of nominations, and your passion for giving women a voice and a choice is clearly demonstrated in these nominations,” wrote Kim Etherington, the charity’s Executive Manager. CHOICES Childbirth Education and Doula Services is a non-profit, registered charity that supplies support and education services to expectant families in Ontario. The award will be made at their upcoming national conference in Toronto.

Speaking from her home, Lemay said “I feel very uplifted that women in Ontario are watching events unfold in B.C. and can see the courage that it takes to speak out against a very aggressive medical monopoly of childbirth. I’ll be going to Ontario to represent the many outspoken men and women who share my commitment that B.C. will, one day, be the best place in the world to have a baby.”

Gloria Lemay has been a traditional birth attendant for 23 years, providing B.C. families with support before, during and after birth. She was nominated for the YWCA Woman of Distinction Award in 1997. She has three daughters and a 12-year-old grand daughter.
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Further information

On November 1, 2 & 3, 2002, CHOICES will present its fourth bi-annual Enhancing the Birth Experience Conference, in Toronto. Each year, as part of this event, CHOICES awards the Women’s Voice Award. This award is presented to the nominee that has demonstrated the most commitment to childbearing women, and providing them with choice-based care. 

For more information contact:

Kim Etherington at petherington@trebnet.com

Gloria Lemay can be contacted at (604) 650 6038 (pager).

Home Birth Association of British Columbia. Contact Dominique Hogan (Vancouver) 604 929 1261.

WHY ARE BC GRANDMOTHERS FACING JAIL?
Homebirth Assoc. of BC Press Release

Another BC grandmother is looking at a possible jail term this month (April 2002).

Awaiting her day in court is 54 year old Gloria Lemay, found guilty of helping women to have babies. Seventy-three year old great grandmother Betty Krawczyk has only recently been released; her jail term was for saving ancient trees in the Elaho valley.

Gloria has been a traditional birth attendant for 23 years, providing B.C. families with support before, during and after birth. She was found guilty
of breaking an injunction that banned her from practicing as a midwife. The injunction was brought by the newly formed BC College of Midwives, which she had declined to join when it was formed to govern midwives in 1998.

Gloria said "The writing was on the wall when the College of Midwives rented space for their office at B.C. Women's Hospital-midwifery, once a strong
alternative to conventional practice, would be taken over and medicalized. I never dreamed that midwives would agree to such regulation by doctors in order to keep the peace and earn a salary."

For her efforts to make a difference, Betty was sentenced in 2000 after she broke an injunction banning the blockade of a logging road into the
untouched old forests of the upper Elaho Valley. The courts decided to set an example to other protestors and jailed her. She was 72 and had eight grandchildren at the time. "We must fight this government's attempt to control people by charging them with contempt of court." said Betty. "Once you are charged with contempt of court, you are in a black hole without any of the protection the legal system provides for criminal charges.
Government by injunction is a cowardly tactic used against protestors or anyone who disagrees with those in power".

Gloria and Betty are the latest in a long line of Canadian women who have stood for unpopular causes while society grappled with rights and freedoms.  In the early 1900s, Canadian women did not have the right to vote and activism was necessary to gain voting rights by 1925. In 1936 Dorothea Palmer, a nurse in Ottawa, was charged with distributing birth control to women in defiance of federal law. In the 1950s, grandmothers from the Sons of Freedom Doukhobours in Grand Forks, B.C., claimed their right to home school their children. They burned down the government schools that would destroy their culture and identity and were imprisoned for their actions. The right of parents to home school their children took many years of struggle to establish.

Today, these freedoms are taken for granted and if a government suggested their reversal, it would be the object of worldwide condemnation. Gloria
says "Throwing off the shackles of state control over our bodies has been a 100 year struggle for Canadian women. Women can be trusted to make better choices for themselves and their families than the 'parental' bureaucracy that means so well but cannot live in the woman's skin." What is at issue in her case is the right of women to choose a birth attendant outside the government -regulated system when they give birth at home.