Kätilön puhe äitienpäivän marssilla Palestiinan puolesta
Vieraskynä
Tämä blogikirjoitus on kätilö Sivan Finelin puhe, jonka hän piti eduskuntatalon portailla la 10.5.2025 äitienpäivän marssilla Palestiinan puolesta. Doula-akatemia järjesti marssin yhdessä Suomen palestiinalaisyhdistyksen, Arabikansojen ystävien, KAMPA-kollektiivin ja Health for Palestinen kanssa. Kuvituskuva on ottanut Emma Leinonen.
Speech for Mother's Day demo for Gaza 10.5.2025
My name is Sivan, I am a Helsinki-based midwife working in a maternity hospital. I am glad to see all of you here, for not on Mother's Day nor on any other day can we forget the injustices of the world and the ongoing genocide in Gaza and ethnic cleansing in the West Bank.
This past Monday was International Day of the Midwife. Around that time each year the ICM, the International Confederation of Midwives, publishes a statement and a theme for the year. This year it is "Midwives - Critical in Every Crisis".
In Gaza, as we know, pregnant people, people giving birth, people having miscarriages or needing abortions, and newborns are deprived of the critical care of midwives because of Israel's systematic targeting of healthcare facilities and workers, aid embargo, war and occupation. Hospitals have been bombed and destroyed and no medicines are coming in. This current escalation is a consequence of decades of Israel's impunity and support from Western states.
Being a midwife is not only about the hands-on everyday work in homes, hospitals and clinics around the world. It is intrinsically about human rights and feminism, about advocating for and safe-guarding women, gender minorities and children - in times of crisis this work is even more critical since these are the groups that often suffer a double burden. Our work has always been and should always be about defending and empowering the most vulnerable. Thus, in a situation like this, we can not be silent.
The most important work, the hands-on care, is being done in impossible circumstances by our Palestinian colleauges, despite all the risks. The midwives, nurses and doctors themselves are of course just as threatened by the bombs, bullets and kidnappings as the communities they serve - sometimes even more, as aid and health care workers are deliberately targetted. We who are not physically present still can and must fulfill our parts - "critical in every crisis" - as midwives and fellow humans, by building solidarity and demanding justice. It happens here on the streets, in organising and lobbying, in direct action and in educating ourselves and those around us.
Birth work is about ensuring a safe birth for both mother and child. In this alone it is about the health, wellbeing and future of humanity itself. Premature births and miscarriages caused by stress, having to deliver your child in a tent or in the ruins of a house under bombardment, enduring a cesarean section without anesthesia - these are all real horrors faced by the people of Gaza. And a safe birth is of course only the beginning - every child should be able to grow up in safety and freedom, not under occupation and constant war.
The flood of horrible news can make one numb as we read about new atrocities every single day. One piece of news, one little part in this destruction on an unfathomable scale has hit me especially hard as a midwife. This is that the state of Israel has struck Gaza's largest IVF-clinic, one single strike destroying 4000 freezed embryos in an instant and ending other on-going treatments. If destroying even the potential, the very idea of a future generation isn't genocidal, I don't know what is.
The most acute demand is to stop the genocide and let aid in, but what is really needed is decolonisation and a re-imagining of freedom for all the people between the river and the sea. Free Palestine!
