Midwifing Mercy - by Vicki Penwell (Paperback)

About the Book

In a world where preventable maternal and infant deaths are too common, Midwifing Mercy offers a hopeful and practical vision for transforming birth culture through compassionate care, innovative leadership, and global collaboration.

Book Synopsis

In a world where too many mothers and babies still die from preventable causes, Midwifing Mercy: Reimagining Birth Culture with Strategy and Sacred Purpose offers a bold and hopeful vision for transforming maternity care. Drawing from nearly fifty years of frontline midwifery experience and almost 20,000 births through Mercy In Action, Vicki Penwell shares a model of care rooted not only in clinical skill, but in empathy, dignity, intentionality, and deep purpose. Blending powerful stories with practical frameworks, this book equips midwives, birth workers, healthcare leaders, and advocates to rethink systems, lead with mercy, and create cultures of care that improve outcomes for mothers and babies around the world. From servant leadership and radical hospitality to innovation, disaster response, and global capacity building, Midwifing Mercy explores what becomes possible when birth is treated as both sacred and transformational. This inspiring and practical guide is a call to action for anyone committed to reimagining birth culture with courage, creativity, and compassion.

Review Quotes

Every birth is a threshold, a moment when what we offer a woman

either expands or diminishes her sense of what is possible.

Midwifing Mercy is Vicki Penwell's nearly fifty-year distillation

about how culture shapescare, and how care, when it is purposeful and dignified, saves lives.

- NEEL SHAH, MD, OB, ASSISTANT PROFESSOR, HARVARD MEDICAL SCHOOL

This is a brilliant, groundbreaking book. Though it was written for and about Birth and midwifery, it is far-reaching with its sacred concepts that apply to any calling you may have. It is one of the best books I have ever read.

- JAN TRITTEN, FOUNDER OF MIDWIFERY TODAY

Vicki Penwell's wonderful book is a powerful reminder that birth is more than a physiological event-it defines a culture. The stories she tells provide lessons for all those interested in how we can make birth safer and more humane in these challenging times.

- EUGENE DECLERCQ, PROFESSOR, BOSTON UNIVERSITY SCHOOL OF PUBLIC HEALTH

Vicki Penwell has developed and practiced sustainable models of birth that work to save thousands of lives and bring joy even in the worst of times. She is my cultural hero.

- ROBBIE DAVIS-FLOYD, MEDICAL ANTHROPOLOGIST, AUTHOR, BIRTH AS AN AMERICAN RITE OF PASSAGE

Vicki Penwell has transformed birthing for women and their families the world over. Her career and care is a life-changing commitment to excellence in science and compassion in professional birthing practice.

- ANDRÉ LALONDE, MD, OB, ORDER OF CANADA, ADVISOR TO WORLD HEALTH ORGANIZATION

I was brought to tears. This book reconnects us to the humanity that can so easily get lost in a world

moving too fast and to the deeper reason so many of us chose this calling in the first place.

- JAMIE LIMJOCO, MD, NEONATOLOGIST, ASSOCIATE PROFESSOR, UW SCHOOL OF MEDICINE AND PUBLIC HEALTH

Vicki Penwell has written a rare and necessary book: one that understands that maternal survival, newborn survival, and respectful maternity care are inseparable.

- SUELLEN MILLER, CNM, DIRECTOR, SAFE MOTHERHOOD PROGRAMS, UCSF