Midwife Crisis
Why are women being arrested for delivering babies in Maryland?
Cover Story
Before she got pregnant, before she had even seriously considered getting pregnant, Sheila Clemmons knew just how her daughter would be born. She'd seen it on TV.
“I was a Little House on the Prairie nut,” she says, “and I thought it was really cool the way they had their babies at home. They had personal people there, it was a personal event—no strange people looking between their legs. It was just a beautiful thing.”
When Shannen Michelle Clemmons-McKay was born on Sunday, Oct. 2, 1994, in a little house on the exurban frontier of Howard County, Md., it was like a scene out of Laura Ingalls Wilder—updated with wall-to-wall carpeting and alternative lifestyle arrangements. Sheila's common-law husband, John McKay, was there, pacing in and out of the bedroom where she lay. Their friend Judie Pradier acted as midwife, with another woman assisting her. There was music playing, and food and drink and herbal tea. A couple of other close friends took turns videotaping the event for posterity. Sheila endured the 16-hour labor without painkillers, just like Ma Wilder.
But things didn't quite go as planned, and Shannen's birth ended up more like The Fugitive than Little House. Three days later, Clemmons and McKay bundled their daughter into the car and fled across the back roads of Howard County. The police arrived at their home barely a half-hour later, with a child-abuse investigator from the Howard County Department of Social Services in tow. Finding nobody home, Detective Larry Texeira put out a radio call, and police cruisers combed the county looking for the outlaws.... Continued 
Issue of Mar. 3 - 9, 1995
News and Features
- Midwife Crisis
Cover Story - Lei-ing It On Thick
The City - Waiter, There's an Infestation in My Soup!
The City - Living Legacy
The Mail - Dead Wrong
The Mail - Don't Let the Dead Lie, Part II
The Mail - Evil Dead
The Mail - Don't Let the Dead Lie, Part I
The Mail - The Right Time
The Mail - A Tax on Both Your Houses
The Mail
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- Zoned Out: The City's Assault on Blagden Alley
Streetscape - POINTING THE FINGER
Loose Lips - Loyalty Oath
City Desk - State of Confusion
City Desk - Those Who Do Not Learn From History...
City Desk
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Film Review - Suffragette City
Film Review
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Sound Check - The King of Barstool Mountain
Music Review - Music From the Television Series
My So-Called Life
Music Reviews - The Complicated Futility of Ignorance
Music Reviews - King
Music Reviews - It's a Mad, Mad, Mad, Mad Professor
Music Reviews
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- A Couple of Cowards
Theater Review
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- Venice Is Burning
Art Review - Indoorsman
Books - After the Firefall
Artifacts - The Brady Barrage
Books - Spinning a Better Web
Books
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