About INA MAY

Ina May Gaskin, CPM, has been called “the most famous midwife in the world.” She is the founder of The Farm Midwifery Center in Tennessee, one of the first out-of-hospital birth centers in the United States and has been credited with the emergence and popularization of direct-entry midwifery since the early 1970s. She is the author of four books: the wildly popular Spiritual Midwifery (1975) as well as Ina May’s Guide to Childbirth (2003), Ina May’s Guide to Breastfeeding (2009) and her latest, Birth Matters: A Midwife’s Manifesta (2011). Her books have sold over 1 million copies and have been translated into ten languages. Ina May was the president of the Midwives Alliance of North America (MANA) from 1996 to 2002. In 2003, she was chosen as Visiting Fellow of Morse College at Yale University and in 2009, she was given the title of Honorary Doctor by the Faculty of Health and Human Sciences of Thames Valley University in London, England. In 2011, she received the Right Livelihood Award (also known as the Alternative Nobel Prize), given in an award ceremony before the Swedish Parliament, where she delivered this speech. Ina May still delivers babies and is a prominent national and international speaker.  She was inducted into the National Women’s Hall of Fame, alongside 8 others, including Nancy Pelosi and Betty Ford, in Seneca Falls, NY on October 12, 2013.