Monday, October 15, 2012

The Greenhouse Birth Center Gets A New Name

Not even two days after closing of the Greenhouse Birth Center, LLC to avoid any consequences in civil court, the same midwives have forged their own new business. Never mind that two of them have filed for bankruptcy to dismiss accountability for wrongful death(s), and they pulled the same move with the business itself. 

Check out Harmonious World Midwifery  (AKA Sage Midwifery)
(Formerly known as the Greenhouse Birth Center in Okemos, MI)

The "Harmonious World" midwives are charging $3,000.00 per birth, but surely can not afford malpractice insurance to protect the families they serve.  Not only have their staff and practices gone without change, their language too remains the same:

      "The midwife is trained to work with normal, healthy pregnancies, thus she is aware       of identifying deviations from normal, healthy pregnancies, and will refer the mother
      to obstetrical care should complications arise."  

The least they could do is tell people the truth!  How about telling women they trust birth...at all costs.  If pregnancy becomes "high risk", they'll just tell you it's a variation of normal anyway.  There are assessments that can be done to evaluate risk, but these midwives will tell you instead how unnecessary those assessments are...leading to severly lacking risking out protocols.  If your baby dies because they didn't inform you of the risks, and they didn't do their jobs...well then the baby just wasn't meant to live.  If they could be honest with women, and if women still chose their care, knowing the truth, at least they are choosing something that they want and believe in. 

Instead, these midwives continue to pretend to be something they are not.  They are feeding women the same false idea that they know what to look for and will get them help if they need it.  Every single infant death and injury over the past two years, is proof that this is nothing more than a false ideal, something to lull mothers into feeling safe when they are not.  It's either a crafty marketing tool to broaden their client base, or denial in recognizing the gap between what they tell people and how they actually practice.   
 
Indoctrination continues: 

      "Pregnancy and birth can be a normal and empowering process in a family's life." 

...unless you are taken advantage of to advance an agenda, and/or your baby dies because of severe negligence.  How is that empowering?  

      "Thus, I have great faith in the notion that families are to be primary in the role of       
      decision-making for their care." 

This basically means that families are birthing unassisted, and should anything go wrong, the midwife has absolved herself of any, and all responsibility.  It should clearly be understood to mean that you're not paying $3,000.00 for the care of a professional that takes responsibility for your safety.  There is nothing about this relationship that will be fiduciary.  A more accurate description would be: a mother, fed a bunch of lies about how her body can do this, trained to think she will be empowered by her experience, and then left in the dark when it ends in disaster.  Midwives work very hard to craft "informed consent" to alleviate themselves of liability should things go wrong.  They hold workshops on this very topic, as evidenced in recent posts. 

Hey Audra Post, CPM, founder of "Harmonious World".  How many of the 300 babies you had the privilege of delivering died?  How many were injured?  How is it that you are under such financial and legal stress that you have to file for Chapter 7 bankruptcy to avoid a wrongful death lawsuit, but can somehow manage to open a new "business"?  My pregnancy and birth were far from "normal", and you either didn't bother to tell me, or didn't recognize that there was an enormous problem.  The same is true for your CNM "Birth Assistants", Clarice Winkler and Shelie Ross.   

Don't think for one second that the women of this community won't see through this charade ladies.  Families deserve to know the truth about who you are. Your websites, old and new, are full of misleading information.  

Your despicable actions speak for themselves.  You are not destitute.  You are not mourning. You clearly do not have one bit of remorse for the harm you have caused to many families, or you wouldn't still be practicing.  I can say you are strategic, sneaky, and relentless.  I can also say you have cost too many lives.  The kind of people you are continues to be revealed in your own actions.  

Unfortunately the pattern will continue, and it will only be a short matter of time before tragedy strikes again.  When nothing about improving practices takes place, when nothing is learned in retrospect, then the dabalacle continues.  It's like the dog that chases it's tail endlessly, pretending he doesn't hear his owner's call.  He continues in this manner until he (or in this case someone else's baby) falls over dead. 

Nothing, I repeat nothing, is "harmonious" about the way you operate, and nothing about the care women are receiving from your group is "empowering," no matter what you call your "business". 

9 comments:

  1. Disgusting. How do these women live with themselves. Can you sue them individually? So there is at least that on record, no matter what they decide to rename their business?

    What a bunch of dishonest, deceptive birth junkies.

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    Replies
    1. We did include all three midwives as individuals in the lawsuit. Two of them have filed for bankruptcy themselves, one of them who has done this all before...likely for the same reason, to avoid accountability for wrongful death.

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    2. For those of us who are not as knowledgeable on how to avoid legal recourse by filing bankruptcy, can you explain how this works?

      The midwives declare bankruptcy = no liability on their part.

      Really?

      This just seems WRONG. And I hope is something that the local media can devote a little attention to.

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    3. This was new for us, and if we weren't dealing with it personally, it would make no sense. So a civil lawsuit is viewed as a creditor in bankruptcy court. The two midwives who filed in our case each filed differently, one for chapter 7, and the other for chapter 13. (We learned later that the chapter 13 move was b/c she already filed ch 7 to get out of a civil lawsuit 8 years ago.) When you file chapter 7, they dissolve all of your assets and debts, no one gets paid, civil suit gets dismissed. When you file ch 13, you have to make a plan to pay your creditors. However, in this ch 13, we were the ONLY creditors named, and she purposefully did not plan to pay us a dime in her plan. Had we not hired, and spent thousands of dollars out of our own pockets to fight this in bankruptcy court (which she counted on), the case would have been confirmed in court and she would have walked away. When you file any kind of bankruptcy, it puts an "automatic stay" on the civil case, meaning it freezes until bankruptcy court is finished. There are a lot of reasons that both of these cases were "bad faith claims", but it comes down to money. If we can't pay thousands and thousands of dollars for a lawyer to go after them, they get the case dismissed, with no consequence. It's a terrific loophole for not having insurance, and for not being accountable to anyone. Yes, I absolutely think the media and every legislator out there should know about this!

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  2. Are you able to demonstrate in front of the center - in the public right of way?

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    Replies
    1. They have closed the center itself for now. They are offering services via home birth with their new business.

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  3. So they do not have an address as in the GHBC? Or is it mainly from the website? Where are their office appointments? I would love to gather people to picket out side for a day! I know many who would join. !! Can we think about this as a choice of protest?

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  4. THANK YOU THANK YOU. My wife was talking to this very woman and did not seem to want to listen to me about the bad feeling I had about the whole process. Without this post, she'd probably have been dead set on this!

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  5. Dear Sm,
    I am glad we could help shed some light. One of the hardest things about out-of-hospital birth is really knowing who you are hiring. The best advice I can give is to look for a midwife who is highly educated (AMCB certified), licensed, and insured. Unfortunately, the Lansing area is short on options. There are some, and there are even more options in the Detroit, Ann Arbor, and Kalamazoo areas. Good luck in your search, and congratulations on the baby on the way.

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