Birthing a Movement

Renée Ann Cramer is Chair and Professor of Law, Politics, and Society, and the Herb and Karen Baum Chair of Ethics in the Professions at Drake University. She is the author of Cash, Color, and Colonialism (2005) and Pregnant with the Stars (Stanford, 2015).

• Introduction: Knowing About Legality and Illegality in Midwifery Care in the United States1. History and Status of Midwives in the United States2. Modern and Professional: Legitimating, Marketing, and Reimagining Midwives3. Mostly Happy Accidents: Successfully Mobilizing for Legal Status4. Rights, Rules, and Regulation5. Catching Babies and Catching Hell: Constitutive Interactions in the Limits and Shadow of the Law6. Deep Transformations, Deep Contradictions: Changing Birth Culture One Movie, One Picnic, One<3.>Tiny Little Epistemological Shift at a TimeConclusion: Attending to Birth in Sociolegal Scholarship: Embodied, Interdisciplinary, and Authoritative Knowledge

"A beautifully written narrative weaving together passionate, sometimes harrowing stories from midwives, activists, and mothers. This book is a significant legal intervention and a brave, innovative, and sophisticated exploration."—Eve Darian-Smith, University of California, Irvine "Integrating an impressive array of qualitative data, rich personal stories, sophisticated theoretical analysis, exquisite writing, and a compassionate authorial voice, this splendid book is a great read and a major addition to the sociolegal scholarship on law and social movements."—Michael McCann, University of Washington "Engaging and compassionate. A must-read for every social movements scholar, it is written so as to be accessible and relevant to the undergraduate reader as well. Birthing a Movement is a book that I plan to cite and assign for years to come."—Sarah Hampson, University of Washington "Birthing a Movement forcefully demonstrates how scholar-activism can advance the field through an absorbing narrative that is grounded in the experiences of activists themselves."—Erin Mayo-Adam, Law and Society Review