Women petition to become EMTs in Borough Park

[Buzzard]

google.com/hostednews/ap/art ... 2b0c845657

 

So it seems that the jewish community has their own EMTs and women would like to be a part to help other women in need. Sounds reasonable... so of course it wont work.

 

 

Quote

He said a similar proposal had been rejected about 25 years ago — and that nothing had changed since then. "We have an internal statement basically saying we are continuing our policy," he said.

 

Heshy Jacobs, a member of Chevra Hatzalah's executive board, told the popular Orthodox Jewish blog Vos Iz Neias that adding women could affect response time.

 

"There are many things at which women are superior, but when it comes to speed and physical strength, which are both of the essence in a medical emergency, it is a proven fact that men have an advantage," Jacobs told VIN News in September. "Additionally we already have systems in place to get our responders in place as quickly as possible. ...By introducing women into the scenario, you are adding another layer to the process and you are talking about a situation where a delay of seconds can literally cost lives."

 

[YPestis]

Men have more upper body muscle strength but I don't believe they are faster EMTs. I certainly would like to see where the data shows women are inferior EMTs....or the "inferior" speed and strength of women makes them poor EMTs.....

[JumpingtheSnark]

This is SO ridiculous...In the Olympics, the men are faster than the women in the 100 yard dash by about 10 seconds.

I doubt any EMT is in the shape of an Olympic sprinter....and that's not a dig on EMTs it's a dig on the notion that women can't be faster than men. Ridic.

[gardenvarietycitizen]

There was quite a discussion of this on imamother. The one thing that stood out to me was so many of the detractors (quoted from various news articles and the like) seemed to assume women would be slower to respond because they'd need to spend time getting all dolled up before going out. Which, most of the imamother posters (even those against the idea) were laughing at.

[clibbyjo]

I know an EMT and he is about 300 lbs. He is not getting anywhere fast and I know the women EMT's he works with and they are faster and can move better. He hates me anyway, so hopefully I would get the women on call if I am ever in that area and need an ambulance.(knock on wood)

[SunnyAndrsn]

The speed and strength thing are lazy ass excuses. EMTs work as a team, you're not going to see an EMT lifting anyone out of a car single handed. WTF?

Men aren't going to be establishing an airway any faster, or doing chest compressions any faster.

What sexist BS.

[apple1]

The speed and strength thing are lazy ass excuses. EMTs work as a team, you're not going to see an EMT lifting anyone out of a car single handed. WTF?

Men aren't going to be establishing an airway any faster, or doing chest compressions any faster.

What sexist BS.

That.

(As a sum total, a large majority of health professionals are, and have been as long as I know of, women). What a bunch of garbage.

[sableduck]

I am a female paramedic, as is my sister. My sister in law is an EMT.

I have NO IDEA what he is talking about. Upper body strength is important to lift the patients, but the really big ones you have more than one person lifting anyway. I can't imagine what they are referring to with response c times, unless they asume women need to find childcare before responing.

[Seven Severn]

This is SO ridiculous...In the Olympics, the men are faster than the women in the 100 yard dash by about 10 seconds.

I doubt any EMT is in the shape of an Olympic sprinter....and that's not a dig on EMTs it's a dig on the notion that women can't be faster than men. Ridic.

The current men's world record in the 100 meter dash is 9.58 seconds and the women's world record is 10.49 seconds. That's a difference of less than a second, not 10 seconds.

[JumpingtheSnark]

The current men's world record in the 100 meter dash is 9.58 seconds and the women's world record is 10.49 seconds. That's a difference of less than a second, not 10 seconds.

oops. i misthought. 10 seconds did seem like a lot. meh, point is the same.

[emmiedahl]

I know an EMT and he is about 300 lbs. He is not getting anywhere fast and I know the women EMT's he works with and they are faster and can move better. He hates me anyway, so hopefully I would get the women on call if I am ever in that area and need an ambulance.(knock on wood)

The EMTs who came when my baby had a seizure were all obese men. They were probably not the fastest EMTs, maybe a more fit person would have beat them by 5 seconds, but they were damn good at what they did; they got me calmed down and the baby packed up and to the hospital in minutes. I don't why a female would be slower. There are other important characteristics of an EMT besides speed. Considering that many Jewish women don't want to be unnecessarily handled by a man, I would think a female EMT would get less resistance in certain circumstances.

[2xx1xy1JD]

It's interesting, because this is a proposal that came from within the community and it has support from women who don't consider themselves to be necessarily feminist or ground-breaking. You also have the rise of social media for women in the Orthodox and ultra-Orthodox communities (imamother.com has grown into a HUGE site), which provides an alternate outlet to the established ultra-Orthodox media. The ladies are getting a voice, and are increasingly willing to use it.

In short, what we are seeing isn't just a practical or religious issue, but a bit of a turf war.

The idea behind Hatzolah, btw, is that emergency responders from the local neighborhood are trained, so that response times are faster. For women, that means that the men helping you with an emergency childbirth issue aren't anonymous public ambulance attendants or hospital personnel - they are literally the guys who live in your building, and who send their children to your kids' school. Jewish law allows the laws of modesty to be suspended when there are life-and-death issues, but these women still feel really weird about constantly seeing the men who would have seen them give birth.

[Kelya]

It's interesting, because this is a proposal that came from within the community and it has support from women who don't consider themselves to be necessarily feminist or ground-breaking. You also have the rise of social media for women in the Orthodox and ultra-Orthodox communities (imamother.com has grown into a HUGE site), which provides an alternate outlet to the established ultra-Orthodox media. The ladies are getting a voice, and are increasingly willing to use it.

In short, what we are seeing isn't just a practical or religious issue, but a bit of a turf war.

The idea behind Hatzolah, btw, is that emergency responders from the local neighborhood are trained, so that response times are faster. For women, that means that the men helping you with an emergency childbirth issue aren't anonymous public ambulance attendants or hospital personnel - they are literally the guys who live in your building, and who send their children to your kids' school. Jewish law allows the laws of modesty to be suspended when there are life-and-death issues, but these women still feel really weird about constantly seeing the men who would have seen them give birth.

I read some allegations of misconduct on an imamother thread about this- women saying the responders wouldn't leave when asked, or that multiple people watched the birth or "assisted" even when it wasn't necessary. Someone described having like five responders in the room all staring at her vagina and she was understandably not happy about that.

There's no practical, secular reason for a woman to not be an EMT. There's no valid religious reason for a woman to not be an EMT that has been explained over at Imamother or in any news or discussion of this issue, and none that I can think of myself. It's just a bunch of sexist, patriarchal pigs being sexist, patriarchal pigs.

[doggie]

NEW YORK (AP) - Most Orthodox Jewish women avoid touching men except direct relatives. They don't sit next to men on buses or even at weddings. They have separate swimming hours at indoor pools. But for an emergency birth, Orthodox Jewish women will usually turn to the all-male volunteer ambulance corps known as Hatzolah.

Now a group of women in one of the country's largest Orthodox Jewish communities is proposing to join up with Hatzolah as emergency medical technicians to respond in cases of labor or gynecological emergencies.

The proposal for a women's division has stirred up criticism within Orthodox Jewish circles, with one well-known blog editorializing that it amounts to a "new radical feminist agenda." And when a prominent elected local official, Assemblyman Dov Hikind, spoke about it on his weekly radio show, he was criticized for even bringing the subject up.

Rachel Freier, a Hasidic attorney who is representing the women in the Borough Park neighborhood of Brooklyn, said there is a need for emergency services that adhere to the community's customs of modesty, calling for the sexes to avoid physical contact unless they are related.

"It has nothing to do with feminism," Freier said. "It has to do with the dignity of women and their modesty."

She is careful to avoid framing the proposal as a critique of Hatzolah, whose work she says they respect. Instead, she says it is a matter of reclaiming a "job that has been the role of women for thousands of years" - that of midwife. "We are so proud of Hatzolah," she said. But, she added, "they can't understand what a woman feels like when she is in labor."

The volunteer ambulance corps was founded by Rabbi Herschel Weber in Williamsburg, Brooklyn, in the 1960s in response to a perceived delay in responding to emergency calls made by Jewish communities. Today Hatzolah, a Hebrew word that translates as "rescue" or "relief," has dozens of affiliates around the world, each of them operating independently and often in close coordination with the community they serve. Policies, such as whether women can volunteer, are usually set locally by each affiliate.

It is unclear how many Hatzolah affiliates allow women to volunteer. But in Israel, for instance, United Hatzalah, which responds to more than 112,500 calls per year, has volunteers who are both male and female, as well as secular and religious, according to its website.

And the new division being proposed in Brooklyn by the women Freier represents - it would be known as the Ezras Nashim, Hebrew for "women's section" - would be modeled after a program created more than a year ago in New Square, N.Y., a small, insular Orthodox Jewish community in New York City's northern suburbs.

But a program for women, with women volunteers, in Borough Park would be far more ambitious in scope and size. Besides being one of the biggest Orthodox Jewish communities in the country, if not the world, the neighborhood had the city's highest birth rate in 2009 with 26.7 per 1,000 people, according to the Department of Health. That is a lot of babies that need to be delivered.

Yocheved Lerner, 49, is one of the women who would like to work as a volunteer for a newly formed all-women Hatzolah division in Brooklyn.

A state-certified emergency medical technician and mother herself, she said her group has a list of about 200 trained Orthodox Jewish women who could respond to medical calls in the neighborhood.

"There are strict rules between men and women, except in the case of Hatzolah," she said. "The problem is that any number of men might respond to a call on Hatzolah." That has been a source of "tremendous embarrassment" for some women, she said.

"It's quite unfortunate that it's been the case when seven or eight men have responded to a woman in labor call," she said. "If birth is imminent, that's how many people are watching. And it's a very, very troubling situation for a woman."

She said a core group of about five women had spearheaded the proposal and that it is drawing wider support. She emphasized that in no way did they want to or expect to work alongside the men of Hatzolah, suggesting they could have their own ambulances available to them.

"We don't want to be socializing with the men of Hatzolah," she said.

Chevra Hatzalah, a registered nonprofit, serves much of metropolitan New York City, including Borough Park. They dispatch about 50,000 calls a year and have 1,200 volunteers, said its CEO, Rabbi David Cohen.

Interviewed recently about the women's proposal, Cohen said he had not heard from the group of women directly but had read about their proposal.

Nevertheless, he declined to answer specific questions about it.

"I really haven't talked to the people. I don't know what they want exactly," he said, adding that Hatzolah's four-member rabbinical board released an internal memo saying that they should not engage in discussions on the matter.

He said a similar proposal had been rejected about 25 years ago - and that nothing had changed since then. "We have an internal statement basically saying we are continuing our policy," he said.

Heshy Jacobs, a member of Chevra Hatzalah's executive board, told the popular Orthodox Jewish blog Vos Iz Neias that adding women could affect response time.

"There are many things at which women are superior, but when it comes to speed and physical strength, which are both of the essence in a medical emergency, it is a proven fact that men have an advantage," Jacobs told VIN News in September. "Additionally we already have systems in place to get our responders in place as quickly as possible. ...By introducing women into the scenario, you are adding another layer to the process and you are talking about a situation where a delay of seconds can literally cost lives."

Renee Ghert-Zand, a contributor to a blog on women's issues, Sisterhood, published by the Jewish publication the Forward, said the refusal to allow women to volunteer for Hatzolah was an example of discrimination against women.

"Women have been increasingly marginalized from public life and from public view under the pretext of modesty," she said. "They're saying it's not modest for women to give emergency care. I see absolutely no reason why that should not happen. There are women who are trained in the medical profession."

Freier said in an email that she had attempted to reach Hatzolah's CEO and set up a meeting for July or August. "The initial plan was for me to meet with Hatzolah and explain the need for women to join," she said. However, I was told that the policy of women not joining Hatzolah was set years ago."

Undeterred, she said she is discussing the matter with rabbinical leaders in the community.

"We're just trying to make a great organization even better," she said. "We're not filing a complaint. We're coming with a suggestion."

___

Follow Cristian Salazar at http://www.twitter.com/crsalazarAP

[emmiedahl]

I would feel very uncomfortable with a group of men watching me give birth.

[Constance Vigilance]

Why the FUCK are all seven or eight men staying in the room?? I would be throwing the baby AT them if it got them to leave.

This is some fucked up bullshit.

[emmiedahl]

Aren't Orthodox men supposed to be looking away and/or removing themselves from these situations out of respect for the women's modesty? I feel really bad for a woman who had to go through this. I had a family member come into my birthing room (after being told to wait outside in the waiting room) at the end of the birth of my first, and I was too distracted to notice him, but it pissed me off later.

[Kelya]

I don't get how they don't know how many people are responding to a call- if you call an ambulance at 911, you will get the 2-4 (3 in my area) medics you're expected to get. Why are 7 people responding? This just sounds like a bad set up, do they have controls in place to make sure that someone shows up? That at least two or three people show up? And if 7 people show up, why don't they say "oh, its X emergency, you three are most trained in X, so you'll stay." WTF?

This just seems like a weird idea. Just call 911, you're guaranteed to get a standard of care, and you also have official complaint routes for anything that you do not feel is appropriate. Sorry to always bring it back to this, but ever since I read Imamother threads with people asking if they should report flagrant, repeated, obvious sexual abuse to minors, I can barely stomach each batch of ultra orthodox crap.

[Constance Vigilance]

I don't get how they don't know how many people are responding to a call- if you call an ambulance at 911, you will get the 2-4 (3 in my area) medics you're expected to get. Why are 7 people responding? This just sounds like a bad set up, do they have controls in place to make sure that someone shows up? That at least two or three people show up? And if 7 people show up, why don't they say "oh, its X emergency, you three are most trained in X, so you'll stay." WTF?

Yes. It sounds like everyone who's nearby and can respond does, so sometimes eight people show up. Why/how/WHY do they all stay and watch the birth? Particularly for an Orthodox woman, who normally wouldn't even let them see the top of her head? I could not understand less.

[Kelya]

Yes. It sounds like everyone who's nearby and can respond does, so sometimes eight people show up. Why/how/WHY do they all stay and watch the birth? Particularly for an Orthodox woman, who normally wouldn't even let them see the top of her head? I could not understand less.

Just, what if everyone right near by is busy/has their own emergency/went out of town/broke a shoelace? I was imagining a set up where like, four Orthodox men sat around in an ambulance and waited for calls, this just sounds crazy. Do they all carry beepers and everyone gets paged or texted "emergency at 111 new avenue!" and they all rush over? I looked at a few of their websites (including the melodramatic Crown Heights one) and it seems like that, apparently they're rushing out of school, kollel, work and praying to SAVE YOUR LIFE.

I guess I don't get why there's a special ambulance service in the first place. If they really believe that federal and state funded emergency response teams are discriminating against them, why no lawsuits or class action suits or anything? I know medical discrimination exists (and as a public health worker, i aim to help reduce/eliminate that), but I'm really not digging the special separate ambulance service, apart from it being discriminatory, weirdly organized and potentially abusive to women.

[Katiebug]

It makes no sense that a community would be against the idea of women caring for other women at a sensitive time. I'm sure that an Orthodox woman in precipitous labor or suffering from a hemorrhaging fibroid would be more comfortable with a female first responder than with a male. Isn't that why many conservative religious women in general will seek midwifery care or demand to have only female nurses and doctors when they're in a hospital (for any reason), so that they can avoid modesty issues? Can you imagine what it would be like to be in a religious community with rigid gender roles and separation of the sexes, with a heavy emphasis on modesty - and then to call 911 and wind up with seven or eight guys from your religious community showing up to stare at your crotch while you push out a baby? Ick.

I personally had no issues with male medical or nursing staff being present when I gave birth. My wonderful OBGYN is male, plus both of the nursery PAs were male and obviously my husband was in the room. To be blunt, the freaking Pope could have paraded through my delivery room at that point and I wouldn't have noticed or cared. :lol: However I would have been quite uncomfortable with a male relative or friend being there (aside from my husband, of course).

[ilovetchotchkes]

It makes no sense that a community would be against the idea of women caring for other women at a sensitive time. I'm sure that an Orthodox woman in precipitous labor or suffering from a hemorrhaging fibroid would be more comfortable with a female first responder than with a male. Isn't that why many conservative religious women in general will seek midwifery care or demand to have only female nurses and doctors when they're in a hospital (for any reason), so that they can avoid modesty issues? Can you imagine what it would be like to be in a religious community with rigid gender roles and separation of the sexes, with a heavy emphasis on modesty - and then to call 911 and wind up with seven or eight guys from your religious community showing up to stare at your crotch while you push out a baby? Ick.

I personally had no issues with male medical or nursing staff being present when I gave birth. My wonderful OBGYN is male, plus both of the nursery PAs were male and obviously my husband was in the room. To be blunt, the freaking Pope could have paraded through my delivery room at that point and I wouldn't have noticed or cared. :lol: However I would have been quite uncomfortable with a male relative or friend being there (aside from my husband, of course).

My parents insisted on showing up to my birth. My father left when I took off all of my clothes and started screaming. O_O

I agree that it makes no sense for women not to care for other women.