Pregnancy and the Body - A Midwife’s Perspective

Michelle Turner (she/her) is a Registered Midwife and Clinical Assistant Professor of Midwifery at UBC, with an MA in Drama and MFA in Creative Writing. She is a passionate educator and clinician, aiming to advance equity-focused strategies for sexual and reproductive health. Her clinical, teaching and scholarship work center reproductive justice and client-centered care as they intersect with sexuality, pregnancy and childbirth. She contributed to the development of the Canadian Association of Midwives’ havingababy.co, with content advocating for respectful pregnancy and childbirth care. She has published in both academic and non-academic journals including Sex Education: Sexuality, Society and Learning and The Tyee. She is currently working towards her PhD at UBC in Education and Public Health where she is developing creatively engaging and ethically informed pregnancy and childbirth education programs for young people in schools. In her spare time, you can find her walking around with earbuds, listening to podcasts.

In this episode, Michelle mentions Canada’s long-standing policy of forced evacuation of pregnant Indigenous women. Many people don’t know about this policy even though it’s been in place for over 100 years and has been instrumental in the oppression and erasure of Indigenous birthing practices across Canada. If you want to learn more about this policy and its impact, check out the National Aboriginal Council of Midwives (NACM) position statement on birth evacuation: https://indigenousmidwifery.ca/wp-content/uploads/2019/05/PS_BirthEvac.pdf

Here are some articles Michelle has written about midwifery: https://thetyee.ca/Opinion/2022/08/23/Midwives-Provide-Abortion/ https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.1080/14681811.2022.2087178