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Ex-Friends Face Off In Bradenton Midwifery Trial

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By ANTHONY CORMIER

Sarasota Herald-Tribune

Published: September 4, 2008

BRADENTON - It used to be that Jessica Case and Keith McGlade were friends. They went to church together, hung out in the same circles, celebrated the births of each other's children.

But there they were Wednesday afternoon, no longer on speaking terms, their families now enemies, waiting on opposite benches outside a courtroom to tell opposite stories about the morning of Dec. 8, 2004.

Case says McGlade's mother and sister-in-law were midwives who took charge of a fatal home birth.

McGlade says the women were there only for support, and that he and his wife, Mara, made all the decisions, however tragic, before her death.

These differing accounts could set the tone of the case against Linda and Tanya McGlade, charged with practicing unlicensed midwifery in a trial that is thought to be the first of its kind in Florida and one of only a handful in U.S. history.

It is the second trial for the women in Mara McGlade's death. Convicted in 2006, they won an appeal and are back in court this week. The trial is expected to conclude Friday. The women could face five years in prison if convicted.

Deeply religious, the McGlades say they have a right to have children in the privacy of their homes. They see the case as an intrusion of the government into their lives.

But on Wednesday, prosecutors and defense attorneys used opening arguments to frame the case around a single question: Were the McGlades acting as midwives or did they offer only advice and help?

At the outset, witnesses - including Case and her mother, who both attended the birth of Mara McGlade's son, Gabriel - have testified that the women did many of the things that a medical professional would.

Both used olive oil and latex gloves to check Mara's cervix. Linda cleaned and weighed Gabriel when he was born. Tanya pushed on Mara's stomach to dislodge the placenta. They both gave Mara an enema - with Gatorade - to increase the iron in her blood.

After birth, Mara fainted and was taken to a hospital.

She died after two days on life support from internal hemorrhaging.

Prosecutors also are trying to show that the women warned others to keep quiet about their role in other home births, insisting to friends that what they were doing was "technically illegal."

Case, 27, a former family friend who once worshipped at private services in the McGlade home, was at the home and, as Mara's condition got worse, worried that no one had called for help.

She admits that she should have called 911 when Mara turned blue and her body beaded up in sweat.

"But I was afraid of getting them in trouble," Case said. "I knew Keith was afraid of doctors. And I was a really bad friend who did something inhumane."

Meanwhile, Keith McGlade, during heated testimony, maintains that the decisions were his - to have Gabriel at home, to administer oxygen and the Gatorade enema, to wait more than two hours after the troubled birth to call paramedics.

He snipped at Assistant State Attorney Brian Iten - who quickly snipped back -- during key testimony in the late afternoon, once asking the veteran prosecutor whether he "had ever been to a birth before."

"Are you trying to protect anyone with your testimony today?" an exasperated Iten asked.

"I hope so," McGlade answered. "I hope the truth sets them free."

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