We hired a midwife nearly 40 years ago, a former Army nurse. She told us she’d seen so much suffering and death during the Vietnam war, she now only wants to bring life and joy into the world.
She now midwifes at a Catholic women’s hospital in Seattle. The hospital is fighting the pro-aborts’ efforts to force them to perform abortions on demand.
My grandmother’s great-grandmother was a midwife in a village in Europe. (I only know about it from examining the parish records which are available online.) I’m sure she would have been horrified by the thought of someone deliberately killing a baby. At that time many of the babies died soon after birth—my ancestor was trained to baptize the children who weren’t likely to live long enough to be baptized by a priest.