Let’s examine two apologies for the exact same incident. One is terrible. One is excellent.

But first, let me suggest we look at some adorable babies, because we’re gonna need to if we’re gonna make it to the end of this post.

Ready? OK. Last month, Texas Birth Networks, a non-profit that works to improve infant and maternal health outcomes, hosted a convention with noted midwife Ina May Gaskin as keynote speaker. Gaskin co-founded a commune called The Farm in Tennessee in 1971, where she created one of the first birthing centers in the USA. She’s the author of the influential book Spiritual Midwifery, a spirited paean to natural childbirth, written in super-groovy hippie language, which I read in 2001 with a mixture of delight, awe, amusement and annoyance before the birth of my first child. (It contains sentences like “Rhythmically contract and relax the muscles around your coochie and your peephole about 50 times a day” and “Talk nice; it will keep your bottom loose so it can open up easier.”)

After her speech, Gaskin took questions. That’s where the meconium hit the fan.

Tasha Portley, a registered nurse, asked Gaskin about the negative effects on maternal and fetal health of persistent stress caused by racism. (You can hear the question, and Gaskin’s answer here, starting at around the 46-minute mark.)

In a rambling answer, Gaskin first acknowledges that she has little professional experience in this area, then forges ahead. “You couldn’t look at our numbers [on the Farm] and have anything useful to say about it [the effects of racism on maternal and fetal outcomes] because the number of African-American women was rather low,” she says. “Poverty — we had that one covered!” The audience chuckles appreciatively. Gaskin goes on, “Poor people, ironically, can do rather well as long as they grow what they eat, and they’re from certain farming traditions. This has been known for a long time, and it comes from many different countries, that if you do hard work, and this is also borne out in rural Alabama and Mississippi.” She talks about the negative effects of stress, and the fact that there are some poor people among whom maternal death is rare, as opposed to communities that “have to deal with scary stuff day by day, ok?” And adds, “I think poor nutrition is another factor. And you start piling up things that are risky, then they have a cumulative effect.”

Portley tries again, more pointedly, noting that in studies that correct for other risk factors and behaviors and leave race as the only differing factor, African-American women still have poorer outcomes. Gaskin blithely tells Portley, “That’s very true!” She notes that CDC epidemiologists have told her that the phenomenon “cuts across all socioeconomic levels when you’re looking at African-American women. But how big a factor is that in other countries? Again, that’s hard to tell with other countries because they don’t necessarily identify by race as we do here.” She then laments the lack of “really solid evidence” and seems to stumble into praising Margaret Smith (1906-2004), an African-American midwife who wrote a memoir called Listen to Me Good. “Unfortunately all her writing was lost in a house fire,” Gaskin says, “but I talked to two doctors who worked with her. She never had a maternal death. That shows it’s possible.” Gaskin guesses that peer networks and religion helped with Smith’s maternal outcomes, noting, “You had more people going to church during her time — that took some of the load off some of the people. Prayer, singing together, lowers stress.”

Gaskin resolutely refuses to acknowledge Portley’s point (about which there is little dispute): Health disparities between white and black people are significant and growing, even when researchers correct for other factors. Intentionally or not, Gaskin seems to be blaming black women for their poorer outcome: If they’d only grow their own food, work harder, have better peer networks, go to church (fyi, black women are actually the country’s most consistent churchgoers), their health would be better!

After Gaskin’s words hit social media, doula and reproductive health consultant Samantha Griffin pointed out that CDC stats indicate that Black women have three times the risk of death from pregnancy-related causes of their white counterparts. She says what Gaskin should have and could have said: “Though we know that disparities in access to health care and the stress of systemic racism play major roles in these disparities, there’s much we still don’t know about why Black women’s maternal outcomes are so poor. And blaming Black women for their own deaths and injuries cannot possibly be the answer.”

It’s also worth pointing out that though Gaskin is hailed as the “mother of modern midwifery,” this title diminishes the achievements of generations of Black midwives. Long before Gaskin came on the scene, these women did their work out of necessity; The overly medicalized, overly interventionist, morphine-and-Scopalamine-obsessed culture Gaskin fought hard against was for generations not an option for African-American mothers.

Two days after her speech, Gaskin apologized on Facebook. Poorly.

Issues with this apology: Passive voice (“has caused a great deal of hurt”), protestations of not being That Guy/boasting of one’s own awesomeness (“I have spent a great many years of my career shining the spotlight on the massive racial disparities in maternal care”), expressions of “this is not who I am” (if you said it, it is indeed who you are, at least to some degree), overtones of “some of my best friends are Black” (“I am grateful to the many Women of Color who have offered their support”), concluding with a statement that again avoids the first person singular (“it will not fall on deaf ears”).

Meanwhile, Texas Birth Networks did a lot better.

This statement hits all the elements of a good apology: It apologizes personally as well as publicly (Texas Birth Network reached out to Portley before making a statement on social media); it takes responsibility (though the words came from Gaskin, TBN steps up and owns them); it acknowledges the impact of the hurtful act, of not acknowledging Portley’s valid points and not addressing them right then and there. And most importantly, TBN names what it will do to prevent this offense from recurring (something Gaskin does not do): Better team training with more education on anti-racism and inclusiveness education; educating the white membership (sadly, social media comments on the incident show just how far many white women have to go in acknowledging the flaws of an idolized figure in the birthing community and recognizing that Black women have been wronged); reaching out to the wider community — particularly mothers and caregivers of color — for input; naming and thanking the caregivers of color who called them out, and promising to heed their requests for an action plan.

A personal aside: I, Snarly, was grimly determined to have natural childbirth and chose a midwifery practice thinking I’d deliver on a trippindicular cloud of oxytocin and “rushes.” (In Spiritual Midwifery, Ina May calls contractions “rushes”; when the mother is open to them as opposed to whiny and pain-obsessed, rushes are infused with psychedelic, sexual, near-religious fervor.) I giggled a bit at Ina May’s language, but I wanted what she was having. Alas, the midwifery practice I chose did not provide the experience I craved. Many scary tests, many false alarms, and a week after my due date the midwives determined that I had dangerously low amniotic fluid and needed to be induced immediately. A mad rush to the hospital followed, along with labor-accelerating drugs and my clench-jawed refusal of painkillers and hours of agony with barely any progress. Ina May had written that if a laboring mother is “cooperative and selfless and brave, it makes there be more energy for everyone, including her baby who is getting born.” My bad attitude was screwing my baby over! My inability to beam beatifically at everyone was damaging everybody! “Giving somebody else some makes you and everyone else feel good,” Ina May wrote. “You don’t have your baby out yet to cuddle and hold; so giving the midwives and your husband some is giving your baby some.” I WAS A DEMON WHO WOULDN’T GIVE ANYBODY SOME AND WANTED TO KILL EVERYBODY! I yelled at my husband for playing Brian Eno in the delivery room in a stupid attempt to relax me. Brian Eno could suck it! Ina May said, “Don’t complain, it makes things worse. If you usually complain, practice not doing it during pregnancy. It will build character.” I LACKED CHARACTER! Finally, after hours of artificially created contractions that made me feel that my entire midsection was being suddenly compressed by a giant boa constrictor, feeling like a huge failure, I agreed (sobbing) to an epidural. I immediately went from three centimeters dilated to ten, and my baby — my NINE POUND, TEN OUNCE BABY — was born an hour later. The newborn diaper was so tiny on her, the pediatrician said she looked like she was wearing a bikini on the beach in St. Tropez.

Ina May’s philosophy is pretty blame-y. If you don’t have natural childbirth, you’re a victim of the medical lobby, a wuss, a patsy, a woman unable to be “cooperative and selfless and brave.” It is unsurprising to me that she carried this blame-iness over to African-American women as a group, without giving sufficient attention to racism or nuance.

A final addendum: I DID have natural childbirth with my second kid (eight pounds, one ounce, holla), with a much less interventionist and more hippie-dippy and chill midwife. I actually had the trippy experience Spiritual Midwifery promised. Probably because I’d already given birth once, and because I was in a birthing center with a midwife I trusted instead of a scary hospital room with people talking over me, and because I felt in control, the birth was much less stressful for my baby and for me. And maybe Margaret Smith, back in the day, had such a huge success rate because her clients also felt in control. They were working with a fellow woman of color, someone who didn’t condescend, someone who really listened to them, someone who knew what she was doing but also made her clients her partners in their process. The credit Ina May gave to churchgoing and food-growing might also go to, y’know, not being subject to racism in childbirth. It’s a thought.