- Collection:
- Donna Novak Coles Georgia Women's Movement Archives
- Title:
- Rooks talks about the midwifery movement (2:48)
- Creator:
- Rooks, Judith
- Contributor to Resource:
- Paulk, Janet, 1932-
- Publisher:
- Atlanta, Ga. : Georgia State University Library
- Date of Original:
- 2004-04-26
- Subject:
- Feminism
Social movements
Women's studies - Location:
- United States, Georgia, Fulton County, 33.79025, -84.46702
United States, Georgia, Fulton County, Atlanta, 33.749, -84.38798 - Medium:
- audiocassettes
- Type:
- Sound
- Format:
- audio/mpeg
- Description:
- Judith Rooks was born in Spokane, Washington in 1941. Her father was a surgeon in the army reserves during WWII, and her mother was a nurse. She attended the University of Washington where she received a B.S. in nursing in 1963. Rooks married after graduation and then moved to Washington, D.C. where, in 1964, she began working as a nurse at the Clinical Center (part of the National Institute of Health). While in D.C. her husband was sent to Vietnam and during his absence Rooks pursued her graduate degree in nursing at the Catholic University of America. During the late 1960s, after moving back to the west coast, Rooks worked on the weekends at San Francisco's Haight Ashbury Free Medical Center. The couple moved to Atlanta when Rook's husband took a job at Emory University Hospital. Once in Atlanta, Rooks became head of a Georgia Citizens for Hospital abortions, an organization which fought to get the Georgia abortion laws changed. In addition to her activism, Rooks also worked for the CDC (Center for Disease Control) as an epidemiologist in the Family Planning Evaluation Division where she uncovered revealing statistics regarding the disparity between black and white women who were allowed to have "legal abortions" prior to the change in the state laws. This research was used in the Doe v Bolton case which challenged Georgia's abortion laws. She has continued to work as an epidemiologist for the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services and as the Principal Investigator for the National Birth Center Study at Columbia University. Rooks authored numerous publications about family planning, and women's health, as well as being an expert in the field of midwifery. She has also been the recipient of numerous honorary awards including the Martha May Eliot Award for exceptional service to mothers and children, in 1993; the Hattie Hemschemeyer Award for continuous contributions to nurse-midwifery and maternal and child healthcare, in 1998; and the National Perinatal Associations' National Award for Outstanding Contribution to Maternal and Child Health in 1999.
Rooks describes her childhood during WWII. The daughter of a doctor and a nurse, she believed that aside from teaching, nursing was the only occupation a woman could pursue. Graduating from the University of Washington in 1963, Rooks married in 1964, and went on to earn a graduate degree in nursing at Catholic University of America. She describes her early professional experiences, and says that her interest in reproductive rights began when, teaching at San Jose State University, she assigned students to research the effects of illegal abortions on Mexican agricultural workers.
Transcript of this excerpt: JR: So, at that point, you know, I felt like we'd won the abortion issue, and I was moving on to my life which was to be an epidemiologist and a nurse midwife and be active in that area, which is a whole, another area of concern about women having control of their bodies. Contraception is part of that. Abortion is part of that. And, actually, in the '70s and '80s, the Midwifery Movement was also part of that because obstetricians were really treating women as children. You know, "You just come and let me take care of you and I'll do what I think is best," and they were doing a lot of invasive things that women, if they'd known better, would have refused, that are not -- We know now, that so many of the things that are used routinely, and we were -- Then, routinely women were having enemas before labor. We know now that that's a very bad idea. They were being shaved; they hated being shaved and it itched. And we know now that's a very bad idea, but they insisted on it because they were treating it like a form of surgery. And women were lying on their backs with their feet in stirrups, and half the time they were knocked out. All of these things are dangerous for the woman, dangerous for the baby. And midwives, lay midwives in some cases, and nurse midwives -- so the professional midwives in America were, knew better how to deliver, how to assist women to deliver their babies. You know, midwives don't say, "I delivered your baby." I would say, "I assisted you while you delivered your baby" because we don't call it "labor" for nothing. And so, as I got into midwifery, I really understood the Women's Movement more because this whole thing of having male doctors making bad decisions for women, and female midwives understanding the normal physiology of labor and the importance of pregnancy as a transitional time for women -- becoming mothers, getting strength from the process of their pregnancy, understanding that they can -- that their bodies can give birth. The whole thing was a sort of radicalizing experience for me, even though I had been involved in the cultural movement in other ways. - Metadata URL:
- http://digitalcollections.library.gsu.edu/cdm/ref/collection/coles/id/2102
- IIIF manifest:
- https://digitalcollections.library.gsu.edu/iiif/2/coles:2102/manifest.json
- Language:
- eng
- Additional Rights Information:
- Copyright to this item is owned by Georgia State University Library. Georgia State University Library has made this item available under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivs 4.0 International License. For more information, see https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0/
- Extent:
- 79 pages (three audio cassettes)
- Original Collection:
- Georgia Women's Movement Project Collection
Donna Novak Coles Georgia Women's Movement Archives - Holding Institution:
- Georgia State University. Special Collections
- Rights:
-
