"Midwives to the Fairies" combines a contemporary story about a midwife with traditional fairy lore to communicate the message or theme that women continue to be marginalized and silenced just as they were in the past, prevented by patriarchal society from speaking their truths.

In this story, modern midwives faces marginalization because the hospital where Mary works is cutting the maternity wing. Mary, however, continues on as a nursing assistant. She, therefore, is part of a midwife tradition that ties her to the long past. As she says, "my mother did it before me and her mother before her."

Mary is brought back to the traditional midwife's world when she is called to be a midwife on her off hours. In doing so, she helps give birth to a premature baby that is later found abandoned and dead in a shoebox. This apparent infanticide leads to the mother's arrest. Interwoven with this story is a similarly dark fairy story that shows that unwanted pregnancy and infanticide have a long history.

Mary finds herself silenced by patriarchy in the same way fairy stories about infanticide similarly silenced women's participation in infanticide by blaming these deaths on supernatural beings. Mary's husband wants her to keep quiet about her role in the birth of the abandoned baby, while she finds herself not finishing a police statement. She decides to keep silent when she is threatened by the mother's family if she talks about what she knows. She also is silenced by the knowledge that her participation in this birth is considered illegal.

The story's theme or point is that, although the methods might be different, women have long been silenced by patriarchies that refuse to let women talk directly about their experiences.