a freakin' felony???
a freakin' felony???
it amazes and angers me that politics would ever be involved in a woman's choice for prenatal care..
midwifery a felony.. PULEEEZE.
ugh.
I think this Sen John Loudon is fast becoming my very favorite Republican ever.
Columbia Tribune
Reproductive war’s new front line
Midwifery provides cost-effective health care.
By JENNIFER BLOCK
Published Tuesday, July 10, 2007
In May, just before legislators were to recess for summer, Republican state Sen. John Loudon pulled a fast one. He snuck a one-sentence amendment having to do with women’s reproductive choice into an otherwise unrelated 123-page health insurance bill that Gov. Matt Blunt was certain to sign. The measure was approved unanimously before anyone noticed the add-on, and when they did, it caused such a ruckus that Loudon was stripped of his committee chairmanship.
Reproductive politics is war, and this was exactly the kind of sneak attack you’d expect from a partisan politician. Except that this amendment wasn’t about abortion. Actually, it supported a woman’s right to choose - a midwife, that is.
Lobbyists in Missouri tried to legalize midwives for decades. You heard that right. In Missouri and 10 other states, independent midwives cannot get a license, which drives them to practice out of state or underground. Loudon sponsored a bill that would have licensed and regulated certified professional midwives - CPMs, whose credentials are recognized explicitly or implicitly in most other states - and it was finally close to passing when a lone senator filibustered, killing it. So Loudon got creative, and literary, and quietly slipped some Victorian lexicon into the widely popular bill.
The amendment grants anyone with "tocological certification" the right to practice. Tocological is derived from the Greek word "tocos," which means birth. It was code for the CPM credential. Blunt signed the bill into law on June 4.
And faster than you can say tocological, the Missouri State Medical Association was in court, suing for malpractice.
The doctors claim that recognizing CPMs will make birth less safe. That’s incorrect. Midwives provide evidence-based care, and studies show they promote optimal births. A 2005 study of 5,000 low-risk women who planned home births with CPMs in North America - the largest such study to date, published in the British Medical Journal - found that 95 percent of the women had spontaneous, vaginal births, and their babies did just as well as babies born to healthy women in the hospital. The low-risk women who receive traditional obstetric care have far higher rates of cesarean surgeries and other invasive procedures.
CPMs aren’t nurses or doctors. They are trained to be the primary-care providers for normal pregnancy and childbirth in an out-of-hospital setting. Midwives are regarded with suspicion by many Americans, but in much of the industrialized world they are the norm - a woman only sees an obstetrician if she has a problem - and these countries have a far superior track record than we do in the United States. The women there have fewer cesareans, fewer birth injuries and fewer deaths.
In some states, such as New Mexico and Tennessee, CPMs are health-care providers like any other, who list themselves in the Yellow Pages and get reimbursed by Medicaid. In other states, such as Illinois and Indiana, they are outlaws. In such places, women who want an alternative to the hospital must go underground and find an illegal provider. As they give birth, they are accomplices to a criminal offense.
In Missouri, it’s a felony.
The Missouri State Medical Association would rather keep it that way. Arguing in court for an injunction last week, the physicians group claimed that the midwifery measure is unconstitutional because it is unrelated to the larger thrust of the insurance bill, which Blunt lauded as expanding Missourians access to health care. Here, too, the doctors are wrong: Midwives provide cost-effective care to which many women are now being denied access. And don’t consumers have the right to choose where and with whom they give birth? This is not only a major public health issue, it’s a women’s rights issue.
You don’t typically hear Sen. Loudon defending women’s reproductive choice - he’s one of the state’s most vocal abortion opponents - but here he’s proved himself a surprise hero. The chief opponent to the midwifery bill - the one who filibustered, Chuck Graham turns out to be a pro-choice democrat. Surely Loudon wouldn’t want to be labeled a champion of women’s reproductive choice, and Graham wouldn’t want to be branded a foe. But in this instance, the two men have swapped places.
Perhaps Graham and his physician allies could instead follow the lead of Sheldon Wasserman, an obstetrician and democratic state representative in Wisconsin. Last year, he voted for a bill that licensed CPMs in his state. "If women have the right to decide on abortion, don’t they have the right to decide where they give birth?" he said.
Missouri CPMs should be able to practice in the open. It makes the most sense all around, especially in the "Show Me State."
Jennifer Block is the author of "Pushed: The Painful Truth About Childbirth and Modern Maternity Care" (Da Capo, 2007).
it amazes and angers me that politics would ever be involved in a woman's choice for prenatal care..
midwifery a felony.. PULEEEZE.
ugh.
I think this Sen John Loudon is fast becoming my very favorite Republican ever.
Columbia Tribune
Reproductive war’s new front line
Midwifery provides cost-effective health care.
By JENNIFER BLOCK
Published Tuesday, July 10, 2007
In May, just before legislators were to recess for summer, Republican state Sen. John Loudon pulled a fast one. He snuck a one-sentence amendment having to do with women’s reproductive choice into an otherwise unrelated 123-page health insurance bill that Gov. Matt Blunt was certain to sign. The measure was approved unanimously before anyone noticed the add-on, and when they did, it caused such a ruckus that Loudon was stripped of his committee chairmanship.
Reproductive politics is war, and this was exactly the kind of sneak attack you’d expect from a partisan politician. Except that this amendment wasn’t about abortion. Actually, it supported a woman’s right to choose - a midwife, that is.
Lobbyists in Missouri tried to legalize midwives for decades. You heard that right. In Missouri and 10 other states, independent midwives cannot get a license, which drives them to practice out of state or underground. Loudon sponsored a bill that would have licensed and regulated certified professional midwives - CPMs, whose credentials are recognized explicitly or implicitly in most other states - and it was finally close to passing when a lone senator filibustered, killing it. So Loudon got creative, and literary, and quietly slipped some Victorian lexicon into the widely popular bill.
The amendment grants anyone with "tocological certification" the right to practice. Tocological is derived from the Greek word "tocos," which means birth. It was code for the CPM credential. Blunt signed the bill into law on June 4.
And faster than you can say tocological, the Missouri State Medical Association was in court, suing for malpractice.
The doctors claim that recognizing CPMs will make birth less safe. That’s incorrect. Midwives provide evidence-based care, and studies show they promote optimal births. A 2005 study of 5,000 low-risk women who planned home births with CPMs in North America - the largest such study to date, published in the British Medical Journal - found that 95 percent of the women had spontaneous, vaginal births, and their babies did just as well as babies born to healthy women in the hospital. The low-risk women who receive traditional obstetric care have far higher rates of cesarean surgeries and other invasive procedures.
CPMs aren’t nurses or doctors. They are trained to be the primary-care providers for normal pregnancy and childbirth in an out-of-hospital setting. Midwives are regarded with suspicion by many Americans, but in much of the industrialized world they are the norm - a woman only sees an obstetrician if she has a problem - and these countries have a far superior track record than we do in the United States. The women there have fewer cesareans, fewer birth injuries and fewer deaths.
In some states, such as New Mexico and Tennessee, CPMs are health-care providers like any other, who list themselves in the Yellow Pages and get reimbursed by Medicaid. In other states, such as Illinois and Indiana, they are outlaws. In such places, women who want an alternative to the hospital must go underground and find an illegal provider. As they give birth, they are accomplices to a criminal offense.
In Missouri, it’s a felony.
The Missouri State Medical Association would rather keep it that way. Arguing in court for an injunction last week, the physicians group claimed that the midwifery measure is unconstitutional because it is unrelated to the larger thrust of the insurance bill, which Blunt lauded as expanding Missourians access to health care. Here, too, the doctors are wrong: Midwives provide cost-effective care to which many women are now being denied access. And don’t consumers have the right to choose where and with whom they give birth? This is not only a major public health issue, it’s a women’s rights issue.
You don’t typically hear Sen. Loudon defending women’s reproductive choice - he’s one of the state’s most vocal abortion opponents - but here he’s proved himself a surprise hero. The chief opponent to the midwifery bill - the one who filibustered, Chuck Graham turns out to be a pro-choice democrat. Surely Loudon wouldn’t want to be labeled a champion of women’s reproductive choice, and Graham wouldn’t want to be branded a foe. But in this instance, the two men have swapped places.
Perhaps Graham and his physician allies could instead follow the lead of Sheldon Wasserman, an obstetrician and democratic state representative in Wisconsin. Last year, he voted for a bill that licensed CPMs in his state. "If women have the right to decide on abortion, don’t they have the right to decide where they give birth?" he said.
Missouri CPMs should be able to practice in the open. It makes the most sense all around, especially in the "Show Me State."
Jennifer Block is the author of "Pushed: The Painful Truth About Childbirth and Modern Maternity Care" (Da Capo, 2007).
posted by jenni @ 6:57 AM
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