This past Saturday my non-profit, The Arizona Birth Network did a special screening of the film The Business of Being Born – produced by Ricki Lake and directed by Abby Epstein.

It was a total success and I’m still riding on the rush of not only pulling off such an event but having it go so very well. We were hoping for 100 people, and to tell the truth, I thought we were being overly optimistic. In the end – we had 154 people attend, organized a panel discussion that included some incredible birth and wellness professionals, including one of the finest OB-GYN’s in the city, pulled in over $2500 in awesome raffle donations, and raised our profile in the community AND a more than respectable amount of money for the organization.

The Birth Network is my baby. Mani and I started it almost three and a half years ago with very humble plans for a small birth circle in her living room. We told ourselves we’d be happy if five people attended. Somehow, someway I became the co-founder and Director of a full-fledged 501c3 organization that holds four monthly birth circles, a monthly doula networking group, publishes a high quality newsletter and organizes special events like the one this past weekend. It is my proudest accomplishment, the first time in my life I took a dream and made it reality – not on my own of course, but with the help of so many incredible women who share my passion for women and birth.

This weekend, seeing all the hard work and dedication come together like that….I can’t even express what it meant to me. It’s easy to get discouraged when you take on such a huge thing, when there always seems to be so much work to do and so few people to do it. But right now I’m on fire with inspiration and ideas and I’m ready to go. Right now, I feel like we can pretty much do anything.

I’m going to post the speech I read as an introduction to the film. We have a video of it, so as soon as I can figure out YouTube I will post that too. I was pretty nervous, as my life does not afford me too many opportunities to practice my public speaking skills – but I think I did okay in the end.

If you have a chance to see this film, please, please, please do.

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My name is Jeanette LeBlanc, and I am the Director and Co-Founder of the Arizona Birth Network. I want to start by thanking my utterly fabulous Board of Directors for their energy and hard work over the last few weeks as we pulled this together. In particular, a huge thanks to Danielle Muns, who spearheaded the efforts, and who kept us all on track with her enthusiasm and belief in this project.

The Business of Being Born doesn’t pull any punches, it doesn’t sugar coat the realities of mainstream maternity care as it currently exists in the US. Some parts of this movie might not be easy for everyone to hear or watch - they directly challenge the status quo and may even cause some feelings of defensiveness. For the birth professionals in the audience - those of us who have dedicated ourselves to serving women and families in birth - the film echoes the truths we have experienced time and time again, and these truths need to be told.

This documentary also shows us glimpses of ‘alternative birth’, which appear even more dramatic juxtaposed as they are with scenes of ‘mainstream’ birth. It shows us birth as it is, and as it can be. We know that birth is often painful, difficult, a lesson in strength and endurance, a life-altering event. In this film we also see birth as we know it can be – beautiful, empowering, euphoric, ecstatic, triumphant and awe-inspiring. We see women who are transformed through their births, and hear the impact that this has on their lives.

For some of you here, the information in this movie may be coming to you for the first time. I urge you to keep your minds and hearts open to its message. For those of us who live in the world of birth, this information is not new. For us, the importance of this film lies not only in it’s powerful content, but in the audience it is reaching, and will continue to reach. This video will be released in theaters in the New Year, and will be available to the public on Netflix early in 2008. There has never been a birth film that has gotten this much attention, or that has been this available to the general public. I hope that after you leave here you will spread the word about this powerful film, so that more and more women seek it out.

Bottom line: the way we give birth matters. The way we are born matters. It matters to us. It matters to our babies. It matters to our society. Birth is a personal issue, it is a cultural issue, it is a healthcare issue, and it is a feminist issue. It is an issue we cannot afford to ignore.