In this final section Joe summarizes how beginning imprints and that means experiences, impact all later stages of development. He describes how the medical system adapted to pressures and made some changes, many of which were cosmetic. Interventions lead to more interventions in a self-fulfilling cycle, driven by fear and deep seeded conditioning.

Now let's look finally then at what happened with hospitals.  When all this stuff began to come out, and we're talking about major articles in science and major scientific-American, what did the hospital and medical people do?  There's a smart chap a couple of millennia ago said, "Agree quickly with your adversary."  Well what they did was they disagreed quickly with their adversary.  They've got to protect their $50 billion dollar a year industry so what do they do?  They say, bonding, oh, well sure, we'll bond.  And it's sort of like the teacher saying, reading Montessori, "oh, I'll teach Montessori."  We're going come in and we're going cram this process right down.  Well we'll set up bonding.  

We'll even give them a bonding room in certain cases, maybe one hospital out of a thousand would have it, but they all begin to absorb bonding.  And so they begin to let the fathers come in with their camcorders and going right through the same old routines, they're in that brilliantly lit place and all the drugs and all the rest of it, but here was father and when they brought the little baby out and they clipped the umbilical cord and cleaned up, they put it on the mother's belly for a minute and here with the camcorder's recording it all and then the father would hold it and then mother hold it, and then off it went.  And everybody said everything is great, now we've bonded, you see.  Now we've bonded.  And now we don't have to worry.  Oh so we've got daycare, but that's okay, we've all bonded.  So the child's not going be with the momma, she's going back to work and will be with her for a couple of weeks and so on.  Its okay, we've bonded.  Now this is the myth of bonding that is truly a bogus issue and I thank Dianne Ayres in her book for pointing out the myth of that whole thing.  

But bonding of course has to be established somewhere, or should be established in that early period and then it's simply the first step in a long, long developmental process.  So denying that, we have a whole nation of children in trouble and now we're dealing with about three generations that are in trouble, and the trouble is emotional, psychological, and a nation literally at war with itself.  The betrayal of the newborn infant by his primary caretakers, by abandonment, is probably the most damaging, single thing that can happen in life.  

Never again can that child enter into any close bond because they can't trust them.  They can't open up and embrace their world because the world has betrayed them, it’s violated them, its damaged them, its harmed them, they close up to a defense position.  Even when they go ahead and develop high levels of intellect and brilliance and genius levels and so on, they're doing it on behalf of a self-system that feels betrayed, that doesn't trust its world, that doesn't open up to it, that draws from it, simply to bolster its own defense system.

Sweden, the government of Sweden has for a long time offered newborn mothers a full years leave of absence with full pay to stay home with their infants.  Why?  Because it saves the state so much money later on.  Did you know that recently Sweden passed a law that fathers too could get a year’s leave of absence with pay to stay home because they were so critical to the whole process also.  How can they afford to do that?  How can they afford not to do that in this current day and time?

Austria gives a mother a full year’s pay and leave to nurture that infant.  Australia gives any women when she gets pregnant a stipend to live on that she might be able to stay with her infant.  So we find that throughout the world this has been the growing awareness of the importance of this first year of life.  In our country our benevolent government could not even afford, and wouldn't even tolerate the idea of allowing a woman one month leave of absence, pay or no pay, one month leave of absence to stay home with her infant.  At the same time that same government screamed about family values and so on and so forth.  This is irony of an extreme.  

So we find that it costs an average of $37,000 to keep one prisoner in the cheapest jail in the United States.  It costs an average of $37,000 per year.  Our prison population is expanding at the most rapid rate of any epidemic in history.  I've forgotten exactly the percentage of Americans who are in prison at any one time, but his is an issue I've been asked to address many, many times, is this rising prison population.  Well, to say that it all stems from the birth process would be ridiculous, but to state that the birth process is probably the critical element in it, and the prime cause of this, is simply looking squarely at what's going on.  

My call is, my evangelistic call is that women rise up and take back from male surgeons the right toward their own reproductive process.  Until they do we will be in increasing jeopardy.  I would mention by the way that there are six times more fatalities in hospital births than in home births regardless of the situation or the conditions in the homes and that's too worldwide.  And the hospitals of course, I know all their reasoning that they have for that, nevertheless, there are six times more deaths in hospitals than in homes from the birth process.  We stand twenty-first down among the technological nations for our fatalities at birth and birth conditions.  Twenty of the technological nations have better birth records than we have in the United States and yet it cost more to have a baby in the United States by huge folds than anywhere else in the world.  So we have this great irony of the most expensive medical system in the world and the lowest possible care.

One final thing.  I must mention briefly about the plight of the unwed early teenage black mother which is an issue I have to steal myself to approach and get control of myself.  If I didn't get enough sleep the night before I can't approach this issue because I get too emotional but, we find this rapid epidemic increase of early pregnancies, particularly in our black ghetto children.  It's down to nine at an epidemic rate now throughout the United States and pregnancies at nine and deliveries at nine and so on, and at ten and eleven an epidemic increase.  Sixty percent of all black babies are being born to unwed very early young mothers without any support at all from any direction.  They have virtually no families, they have no support, they have no help and they are given the lowest of all possible treatments in hospitals.  

I must mention briefly about the plight of the unwed early teenage black mother which is an issue I have to steal myself to approach and get control of myself.  If I didn't get enough sleep the night before I can't approach this issue because I get too emotional but, we find this rapid epidemic increase of early pregnancies, particularly in our black ghetto children.  It's down to nine at an epidemic rate now throughout the United States and pregnancies at nine and deliveries at nine and so on, and at ten and eleven an epidemic increase.  Sixty percent of all black babies are being born to unwed very early young mothers without any support at all from any direction.  They have virtually no families, they have no support, they have no help and they are given the lowest of all possible treatments in hospitals.

Secondly, in the world that they have experienced total unloving, they have never been loved, and they’ve never been nurtured they never been cared for, they look for something that they can love unconditionally.
Thirdly, they look for something that will unconditionally love them in return.  By the time they get out of the hospital they are at war with their infants, they abandon them at the greatest rate in the United States, they abuse them at the greatest rate in the United States, they kill them at the greatest rates in the United States of any other.  What happens? Because of the treatment they receive.  The study that came out in 1977 about the treatment of minority mothers in American hospitals I received, I got no further than about a chapter into it and I burst into tears.  I said I'm through with the whole business; I'll never fool with it again.  And I didn't for a number of years, got caught back up doing what I' doing now.

QUESTIONS
Q: I don't know if it's really a question but I deal with the inner-city, the teenage mothers that you're talking about a childbirth partner.  So I go through labor and delivery with them and it is a nightmare and they still do that, pull on the cord and it's basically child abuse.  The sad thing is that most of the girls don't realize that they're being abused become they comes from homes of abuse so it's really sad to watch it.  They don't have it in them to fight back because they're so used to being abused.  It's so hard because you're just fighting such a big establishment so I feel a lot of times hopeless in the hospital.  A lot of times I just wait as long as I can, labor with them at St. Anne and then bring them to the hospital and they're ready to push already. I'm happy when we get a drug free baby.  They just drug them out from that moment on and it takes three hours to get the baby in for any kind of bonding. What do you do?  I feel so hopeless.

A:  No, I don't think it's hopeless at all and I think that the power of an aroused feminine group can just be astonishing.  Now I have given several talks for MANNA, the mid-wives alliance in North America and some other mid-wife groups and boy this is one of the most powerful group of women I have ever come across and they are operating out of pocket and just sacrificial, I mean just self-sacrificing to do what they can.  What they're working for is direct entry midwifery in hospitals so that mid-wives can go into hospitals and literally practice mid-wife techniques, not ape the graces of the technological process but to practice true mid-wife processes.

Q: But the laws are such that it's so hard...

A: Yes, but they are organizing lobbyists in Washington, D.C. to operate the same way the A.M.A. does.  Of course, it's out of pocket it's a very minuscule effort but it's the start of it.  And I think if this kind of thing received a lot of support.

Q: Yeah but I wish more lay mid-wives would receive the support of the community because it seems like a lot of the times the community is also in the way of thinking that well yes this is irresponsible and parents should never go to a lay mid-wife, they should have a certified nurse behind this.  It's two different, two separate.

A: Well all of that we'll just have to work through.  But again I think the first thing is that if women were really informed, if they really understood that it's six times more dangerous in a hospital than in homes regardless of the situation.  That's statistical.

Q: Sometimes they don't want to know.

A: If you just get this across but you're dealing a massive generation by generation indoctrination, literally a brainwashing to believe that childbirth is the most painful and dangerous experience that you'll ever have and that to operate outside the medical umbrella is tantamount to suicide.  This is what they're actually, I've heard those very words used in the address of nurses to the hygiene classes and in high schools to the young woman.  That if they do anything other than keep themselves under the medical umbrella it's tantamount to suicide and the most dangerous move they'll ever make in their life.  So you have this as a whole national acceptance built up again for many generations and it's pretty tough but it cam be broken.  I think one of the reasons it will be broken is if they realize the difference it makes in the infant and in the women themselves.

Q: Well with this one baby, for example, even the staff nurses came just to look at this baby because they had never, one of the student nurses came and she'd never seen a drug free baby.  Gosh, this is amazing.

A: Yes it's amazing.  As Michael Mendizza verified when that infant first comes out and makes eye contact and they're not drugged, this tremendous thing happens.  It's a mystical experience.  It's a religious experience.  It turns your whole; it stops your world right at that spot.  So don't forget that what happens at that period is critical to everything that's going to happen the rest of your life.  You women should take that power back into your own hands, get it out of the hands of the male surgeons while there is still time.