House Bill 4810, An Act Relative to Certified Professional Midwives and Enhanced Practice of Certified Nurse Midwives, would provide licensure and oversight for direct entry midwives, i.e., for home-birth midwives (as opposed to nurse midwives, who are already covered). Midwives provide superb care for women and their babies.

Right now, House Bill 4810 is in the House Steering and Policy committee. It would help if you called your Mass. House representative and ask him or her to speak with Steering and Policy committee chair Rep. Kafka and House Chairman DeLeo to encourage them to move the bill through the committee and onto the floor.

You can find out who your house rep is and their contact info here.

Here is the Massachusetts Midwives Alliance. Here is an excellent midwife, who is also our daughter.

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Now, as health care reform is being debated, would be an excellent time to ask your friendly local Senators to support adding Certified Public Midwifery to the list of healthcare providers who can receive Medicaid funds.

CPM’s are trained professionals. They are not nurse midwives and thus send women into the “regular” health care system when the women are at risk in any way. But, if you are pregnant, not at risk, and want a home birth, a CPM is the person to call. CPMs are hugely dedicated women who work long hours for little pay because they love healthy women and their healthy babies [1 2 3 4]. I say this as a proud parent of a CPM.

You can find your Senator’s email address here.

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