“Powerful and persuasive!”
—Roger Ebert, Chicago Sun-Times
“A combatative, devastatingly researched account of how American medicine has deteriorated since it became a multi million dollar business.”
—The Sunday London Times
“There are no frills to hide behind and there is beauty and pain in the realism of the film.”
—Jan Fuller & Phyllis Hudson, Chicago Defender
“The Chicago Maternity Center Story is one of the best political documentaries of the 1970s”
—Chuck Kleinhans, Co-Editor of Jumpcat
For more than 75 years, the Chicago Maternity Center provided safe home deliveries for Chicago mothers. However, when modern medicine’s attitude toward home birth changed and funding from Northwestern University declined in 1974, the center was forced to close. This film interweaves the history of the center with the stories of a young woman about to have her first baby and the center’s fight to stay open in the face of the corporate takeover of medicine.