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  • (mellow music)

  • - There's this belief that the United States

  • is the best place in the entire world to have a baby

  • and that's not true.

  • It's the most dangerous place in the developed world.

  • My name is Michelle Hartney, I live in Chicago,

  • and I'm an artist.

  • A lot of people don't know that our maternal mortality rate

  • in the United States has increased 160% since 1995.

  • Many of our routine practices like

  • continuous monitoring and forcing mothers

  • to give birth on their backs are not based

  • on scientific evidence.

  • There are still a lot of doctors that are

  • not doing what's best for women.

  • I'm a approaching these issues with my art.

  • Art can hit you deeper than just reading

  • a statistic on a page can.

  • I started a series called Mother's Right.

  • I spent the summer sewing 1,200 hospital gowns,

  • one for every woman who died during childbirth in 2013.

  • The fabric of the gowns is made up of the plant derivatives

  • of the drugs that have been used on laboring women

  • for the past 150 years.

  • We had a performance at Daley Plaza in Chicago.

  • The performance included pairs of women folding the gowns

  • into the shape of a flag similar to the way

  • the flag is folded at the funeral of a soldier.

  • To also bring awareness to the number of women

  • who are coming out of childbirth with the same

  • psychological symptoms as men and women

  • who are fighting wars.

  • What inspired me really was the birth experience

  • of my second child.

  • I mean ultimately both of my birth experiences

  • were empowering, but there were things that happened

  • during the birth of my son that just didn't feel right.

  • Lie on your back, those are my words that

  • my doctor told me when I was trying to give birth

  • on my side and they were trying to get me to lie on my back.

  • Doctors should know that you can

  • push a baby out on your side.

  • I was with experts.

  • So that's where Birth Words came from.

  • A lot of the phrases are

  • really disturbing, but they're actually things

  • that doctors were saying to their patients

  • while they were giving birth.

  • And I've had people think that I made them up

  • because it's hard to believe that a doctor

  • would say "suck it up and get over it"

  • or "if you don't shut up we will knock you out."

  • My artwork is not trying to say that doctors are bad

  • or hospitals are bad.

  • What I'm trying to say is that

  • women need to know that they need to be informed

  • when they're going into childbirth.

  • I want my daughter, if she has a baby to

  • be giving birth in different circumstances than we are now.

  • Women have a choice, and that knowledge can change the way

  • that we are experiencing childbirth in the United States.

(mellow music)

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