BUILDING THE NATION THROUGH WOMEN'S HEALTH: MODERN ...

participate in any scheme which prepared to train non-nurses in the science of midwifery.” 451 In
response to this, Yang submitted an editorial to the China Medical Journal (hereafter CMJ)
claiming that no industrialized nations held such high standards for their midwives. Holland,
Denmark, and France all used midwives who were not nurses, with very good results.
Furthermore, in England and the United States pregnant women were attended by physicians.
By what logic could poor, backward China, whose births numbered 12 million per year, expect
to achieve standards higher than those of Europe or the United States? According to European
maternal and child health criteria, one midwife could safely attend 120 to 150 deliveries per year,
and China would thus need 64,000 midwives to deliver the goal of at least 80 percent of all
babies. It would be impossible to give 64,000 women high-level nursing training when China’s
high maternal and mortality rates called for immediate action. She pled for professional
recognition of midwives, even those with minimal training, to help improve the safety of
childbirth. 452 After all, as Yang stated, “Midwifery is one of the professions.” 453
Marion Yang and John Grant of PUMC discussed at length how to address the high
infant and maternal mortality rates in China. In an autobiographical essay reflecting on her
career, Marion Yang explained her thoughts on creating a midwife training program for China.
Because in Chinese society the birth process was considered dirty, she was unsure how to recruit
midwife students. She and Grant originally thought to accept women with elementary school
educations and give them abbreviated basic training, perhaps for two to six months. However,
Yang worried that these women would soon be lost to social and scientific advances, and that the
career of these semi-trained midwives would soon die out. She decided to create a program that
451 Quoted in Bullock, An American Transplant, 173.
452 Marion Yang, “Letter to the Editor,” Chinese Medical Journal 42 (1928): 554.
453 Marion Yang, "Report of the Training and Supervision for Midwives, 1928."
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