midwives

Latino’s born to midwives will no longer be denied passports

MZP23 Comments

An update to this story from almost a year ago. It was reported by the NY Times that Latinos born near the border to midwives were having their citizenship challenged.

Well some good news for us on this front from the ACLU:

Pending court approval, DOS will train its staff on how to fairly weigh all the evidence provided in passport applications and how to avoid improperly subjecting people whose births were assisted by midwives in Texas and along the U.S.-Mexico border to heightened scrutiny in reviewing their passport applications.

All denials will be automatically reviewed by a three-member panel comprised of experienced DOS staff members, and if that panel also denies an application, DOS must communicate the specific reasons for the denial to the applicant. The applicant can then challenge the denial and ask DOS to reconsider its decision.

Additionally, anyone birthed by a midwife who has filed an application for a passport between April 2003 and September 15, 2008 and, with a few exceptions, whose application was not expressly “denied,” can re-apply for free. DOS will be setting up mobile units across the border on specific dates to assist those reapplying.

Via Latina Lista

Home birth in Australia may soon be illegal

MZP1 Comment

New legislation in Australia that requires all midwives to be insured may make home birth illegal and inaccessible.

From News.Com.Au:

Under the draft Health Practitioner Regulation National Law, released last week, a midwife cannot be registered unless she has insurance.

But with insurance companies and the Government so far refusing to include homebirths in the indemnity scheme, midwives will face being de-registered if they attend a homebirth.

Via Citizens for Midwifery.

This is really terrible and this insurance squeeze often effectively makes midwifery illegal/inaccessible in the US too.

Support diverse midwifery education!

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Please read the message below and sign the petition to support diverse and evidence based midwifery education! Today is the last day to sign.

From NARM:

Dear Friend of Midwives,

Only ONE more day to add your name to the NARM petition in support of all routes to midwifery education. NARM’s hope is that this amazing response will send a clear message to the ACNM that the time has come to end internal strife and work together to move midwifery forward. By Wednesday, NARM will close the petition and prepare to present it to the ACNM Executive Committee at the end of the week at the annual ACNM convention in Seattle. If you haven’t signed it yet, NOW is the time. If you have already signed it, please ask any additional family, friends, and colleagues to sign on. Let’s hit 5000 names! Sign the petition here.

NARM has taken a stand in support of all routes of midwifery education, including a formal, structured apprenticeship. We would like to be able to inform you of our progress with influencing the ACNM to change its Position Statement against apprenticeship education. We also know that as we work to make more CPMs available to more women, we will continue to face opposition to our training, our standards of individualized and woman-centered practice, and our very existence as a viable profession in the US. Your voice is what gives us the power and authority to demand a seat at the table over health care reform, access to quality maternity care for all women, and implementation of programs on the state and federal level that will enable more women to have the choice to hire CPMs for their care.

If you would like to be notified of the results of this petition, please take a moment to register your contact information into a protected database controlled by NARM that will allow us to directly contact you with this information and other opportunities to take similar action at the state and federal level for midwifery. You will be able to select areas of interest to you and also remove yourself at any time from our subscription list. NARM pledges to never share your name with any commercial entity and to only use your contact info for the purpose of direct notification of urgent issues and updates regarding promotion of the CPM credential. Again, thank you for your continued support and for helping us to preserve apprentice based midwifery education in the US.

Join NARM’s protected advocacy list here.

Midwives and Students! One more way to get connected is through the new NARM Forum. This forum is for open discussions about all things related to CPMs and the women they serve. Please join us!

Thank you!

The NARM Board

Via Citizens for Midwifery

Livechat with me today about access to home birth at RH Reality Check

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I’ll be doing a live chat with JayVon Muhammad, a Certified Professional Midwife, about access to home birth for low-income women at RH Reality Check today, Wednesday, at 12pm EST.

Information here.

Hope you can join!

Mothers Day good news: Better access to home birth in Washington State

MZP1 Comment

It’s nice to have some good news to share on Mother’s Day. I recently interviewed some advocate, midwives and doulas in Washington State about out-of-hospital birth options there. It’s good news and their model is really making headway for other states and access to midwifery. I elaborate on this in a new article over at Reproductive Health Reality Check, Barriers to Home Birth Fall in Washington State:

Nationally, only a small portion of women give birth outside of hospitals (around 1%) and very few of those women are low-income. In a recent piece for RH Reality Check, The Cost of Being Born at Home, I painted a grim picture of the options afforded to low-income women around the country who are considering out-of-hospital birth. Few out-of-hospital childbirth providers are registered with Medicaid. Cost and physical space available at women’s homes are also significant prohibiting factors. And lack of knowledge of the practice, as well as lack of targeting from media and advocacy promoting home birth (such as the pro-home birth film The Business of Being Born), impact low-income women’s decisions about where to birth.

But there’s at least one exception to this national trend, brought up by the advocates I interviewed and by commenters responding to my original piece-Washington State. In fact, thanks to a history of expansive access to midwifery care and a number of big legislative gains, low-income women in Washington State now have more birthing options than most women around the country.

According to Audrey Levine, President of the Midwives Association of Washington State (MAWS), 2.3% of births statewide in 2007 were performed out-of-hospital.  While still a low percentage, that’s more than twice the national average of 1%. What is even more impressive is the number of those births that are reimbursed by Medicaid.  According to Levine, around 45% of out-of-hospital births attended by midwives in the state are Medicaid births. That mirrors the percentage of births to women on Medicaid overall in the state-also around 46-47%. (Of the 26 states that license CPMs, only 9 allow CPMs to participate in Medicaid, so this percentage is a significant departure from the situation nationally.)

Read the rest here.

Also stay tuned for details about a home birth and low-income access live chat with me and a midwife at RHRC next week!

Back in the saddle

MZP1 Comment

I’m excited to report that I’ve started volunteering again, with pregnant Latina women. Not a full blown doula work, but related. It’s been a while (longer than I would have liked) since I’ve worked with pregnant women. Over the last three years, while I was working as a full-time reproductive rights organizer, I didn’t have time or the ability to commit to doula work.

One of my motivations for leaving my full-time work was to re-integrate doula work (or some related health and healing work) into my life.

Last Friday I did my first stint as a volunteer with a midwife at a local clinic. The setting is a familiar one–older white midwife who works in a clinic setting with mostly Latina immigrant women. This is may be the third clinic setting of that type I’ve worked in. In all three, the midwives were older and white, in all three language and cultural competency were issues.

I’m excited to be working with pregnant women again. I’m excited to be speaking Spanish, to be working with women from the community, to be using some of my skills as a doula. I’ll be working as an interpreter and volunteer, helping the midwife out and working with the women who attend the clinic.

Probably more blogging to come inspired by this volunteer work.

Update: Homebirth rally in NYC tomorrow cancelled

MZP1 Comment

The rally for today has been postponed, due to internal strategy conversations with the parties involved. I’ll post updates once I get any.

Choices in Childbirth is holding a rally tomorrow in support of Julie Finefrock.

Julie is the wife of an SEIU employee who is 6 months pregnant and would like to have a homebirth with a midwife. Despite the fact that NY State has mandated that private insurance companies cover homebirth, SEIU’s insurance does not (they have a loop hole because they are self-insured…it’s a bit complicated). Anyways, Julie has appealed and tomorrow is her hearing.

Attend the rally (info below) or sign the petition.

Rally info: March 18th, 2009
Outside SEIU’s offices, SEIU 32BJ, 101 Avenue of the Americas, NYC.
11:30am-1:30pm, hearing is at 3pm

Home birth in the NYTimes, minus class analysis

MZP2 Comments

An article from this weekend’s NYTimes chronicles the rising trend in home births in NYC. It partially credits the recent Ricki Lake documentary, The Business of Being Born.

The article does a good job of addressing the different challenges for women giving birth in their NYC apartments. It takes about space concerns, neighbor issues, clean up and hospital transfers. The article is also accompanied by a slideshow of photos from various home births.

What the article doesn’t address is the huge class divide in these types of births. I, as a doula and general advocate of midwives and out of hospital births, am a huge supporter of home births. I think they are better for moms and babies who have low-risk pregnancies. I think moms feel more comfortable and are away from the stress and pressure of a hospital. She is on her own time line, no questions asked.

But the huge drawback to promoting home birth is that it is primarily an option for upper middle class women. Not everyone has a home that is safe to birth in. This could be because of family circumstances, overcrowding, lack of support from partners or simply lack of adequate space. There are also obvious financial barriers since most insurance companies won’t cover home births.

It’s unfortunate that an article about birth in NYC didn’t address this issue at all, seeing as it is such a diverse city, in terms of both class and race.

Also, once again an article about women’s health is marginalized, this one was placed in the Home and Garden section. At least it wasn’t in Fashion and Style this time.

Cross-posted at Feministing

Looking for midwives in SE Washington State

MZP42 Comments

A reader sent me this via email:

Hi,

I’ve been a reader of your blog and feministing for some time now. I always really enjoyed reading about doulas, midwives and reproductive rights, but it was in the abstract for me. I am currently pregnant(!) which changes alot for me.

Suddenly I am alot more passionate about these topics. Right now I am lined up with a doctor to give birth in our local hospital, but the more I read and the more I talk to other women I am convinced I want to give birth at home.

I am wondering if you knew any midwives in the SE corner of WA (I live in Walla Walla), and if not, if you knew the regulations on a homebirth not attended by a midwife. Can I even do that?
Thanks for your time and writing!

If you are (or know of) any midwives in the Southeastern part of Washington state, email me at radicaldoula@gmail.com and I will pass the information along to this reader! Or feel free to post in comments. Thanks!

Birth Center available to lease or own in Southern Virginia

MZP1 Comment

Via The True Face of Birth

NATURAL BIRTH CENTER: Lease or Own

Could my challenging circumstance be another’s wonderful opportunity?

I opened the Natural Birth Center in October of 2007. It is one of only two birth centers in Virginia, and is operated currently by licensed CPMs. It is located in Buena Vista, near Southern Virginia University. Myself and my midwifery partner, as Rockbridge Midwifery Care, have been practicing from there, making great progress both responding to and generating a good deal of interest in the region around birth center and home birth.

Due to my husband working in California, I made the enormously difficult decision to leave the practice and reunite my family there. My midwifery partner, Emily Friar, CPM, LM., plans to continue as Rockbridge Midwifery Care and scale back to a homebirth-only practice with an office elsewhere. This leaves open the question as to what to do with the beloved Natural Birth Center building/home.

Ideally, the Natural Birth Center could be leased (at a negotiable rate) to a midwife, as is, set up and functional. This makes it an opportunity to begin your own birth center practice with much lower start-up costs, in an established location. See the tour at http://www.rockbridgemidwifery.com, or contact me for photos. It looks even nicer currently. There is the possibility of a birth cottage or two being eventually added–replacing the rear sheds–a privacy fence and an outdoor play area for visiting children.

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