The first siren sounded at 8:10 this morning. The entire nation, in one familiar movement, stood up and moved into the safe room. Phones charging. Water bottles and snacks lined up. Families hunkered down. The country sealed itself inside reinforced concrete, waiting.

Then my beeper went off.

Pregnant woman, contractions, eight minutes away.

I kissed my children, pushed open the safe room door, and ran to my car.

While so many of us are pressed against safe room walls, another Israel is moving, quickly, quietly, and with purpose.

As bombs fall, dispatchers are taking calls in calm tones. Drivers and ambulances are cutting through roads. Medics and paramedics are assessing scenes and making rapid decisions. Nurses and physicians are receiving a constant stream of patients. Hospital teams are cleaning, sterilizing, documenting, resetting the room for the next person. A whole chain of people leaving their own families behind reinforced metal doors so that someone else’s family can survive the hour.

War teaches us to measure time in seconds, from siren to shelter, from boom to silence. But women’s bodies do not obey that clock, and women’s health emergencies are not generic emergencies. That is why, in this chain of responders, there is a midwife.

Midwifery is not only pregnancy, birth, and postpartum. The World Health Organization (WHO) states that midwives provide 90 percent of essential sexual, reproductive, maternal, newborn,........

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