A Mother’s Right--art and performance pieces about childbirth in america

A Mother’s Right


On September 7th, 2015, 20 women stood in Chicago’s Daley Plaza methodically folding 1,200 hospital gowns as if they were American flags honoring fallen soldiers. The gowns were hand-printed, cut and sewn, collectively comprising 1,560 yards of fabric, 2,000 yards of trim and hundreds of hours spent laboring over a sewing machine in a third-floor studio, with no air conditioning, in the sweltering Chicago summer.



That morning, the gowns were loaded into a U-Haul and driven through the cacophony of the city streets to Daley Plaza, where threats of rain and online trolls were chased away by sunshine and the women who volunteered their Labor Day afternoons to folding gown after gown after gown. Each gown represented one of the ********1,200 women who die from childbirth every year in the U.S******** This performance, called Mother’s Right, is the work of Michelle Hartney, an artist whose work focuses on women’s health—and more specifically, on the injustices women face when they give birth.



The U.S. has the highest maternal mortality rate among developed countries and is the only one where the death rates are climbing—since 1995, America’s maternal mortality rate has increased by 160 percent. Hartney conceived of Mother’s Right as both an indictment of a healthcare system in which so many women needlessly die and as a tribute to those women. “So few people know how high our maternal mortality rate actually is, and I felt like this needed more attention,” Hartney told Ms. “I came up with the visual idea to make 1,200 gowns and print them with the plant derivatives of drugs that are used on laboring women. But the actual folding—appropriating the flag folding ceremony—that was the most powerful part. It really let you know that this was about death and trauma.”

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As Hartney neared her due date, she went to what she thought was a standard exam with her obstetrician. The doctor stripped her membranes—a technique used to induce labor—without asking for Hartney’s consent, or even informing her about the procedure. When Hartney stood up after the exam, she started to gush blood. She went into labor that night. “I had no idea what was happening,” she said. “I think my body was not ready to go into labor yet, and it ended up being a 36 hour labor. If the doctor just let things be, I wonder what would have happened? It’s my body and it should have been my choice.”



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While stressful, Hartney recognized that her experiences were tame compared to what many women go through. She dug more deeply into childbirth in America and realized just how pervasive the absence of informed consent can be, how common it is for women to be under-informed about their options and rights and how frequently their voices are ignored. “My birth experience wasn’t horrible, but things were said to me that were ridiculous and upsetting,” Hartney said. “I was mad that I had to be fighting. It shouldn’t have been like that, but it really gave me fuel to do artwork about childbirth and verbal and physical abuse.”

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http://msmagazine.com/blog/2016/10/27/mothers-right/