Life by Life (clip)

young mother bled for two days in the local hospital before recuperating. She and her baby are both fine now.

Days later, the call to mass sounds from the bells of the old church that rises above the main street of Pipioltepec. Its blue-tiled steeples shine brightly in the midmorning sun. Sofia makes the familiar walk up the hill to join the local faithful who sit and kneel at the worn wooden pews. Her black loafers shuffle on the sidewalk. Her grey checkered dress and knit scarf blow subtly in the wind. Catholicism runs deep in this part of Mexico. Shrines to saints sit behind glass at major intersections. A portrait of former Pope John Paul hangs over the bed in Sofia´s sparse clinic. Mother Mary of Guadalupe stands next to the tabletop scale she uses to weigh babies.

Faith binds Sofia to her patients. It establishes another level of trust between her and the women she treats. “Thanks be to God,” she says, “the day is going well.” An 18-year-old expecting mother lays belly up on the bed in her clinic. She is nine months in, and dark stretch marks show as she pulls her solid pink shirt above her bloated belly. Sofia leans in with an old-fashioned horn-shaped stethoscope to her ear. She places the cold metal listening device above the young mother´s belly button and listens for the baby´s heartbeat.

“You may need a Caesarean section,” she informs her in a calm, patient tone. The baby´s fate will be up to the doctors at the public hospital down in Valle de Bravo.

Latin American women are 27 times more likely to have complications during pregnancy than their female counterparts in the United States. Sofia rarely commits herself to high-risk births. She doesn´t have the necessary equipment. At one time, the government supplied her with the bed sheets, syringes and medical supplies. She now buys them herself or receives them in small allotments from Doctor Rubio. But five years have passed since she last received free supplies.

Much of the initial support ended in the late 1970s along with the government program that made her a midwife. Now, the government pays her nothing.