By Ronnie Cohen, Jan 14, 2025. Jessie Mazar squeezed the grab handle in her husband’s pickup and groaned as contractions struck her during the 90-minute drive from her home in rural northeastern California to the closest hospital with a maternity unit. She could have reached Plumas District Hospital, in Quincy, in just seven minutes. But it no longer delivers babies. Local officials have a plan for a birth center in Quincy, where midwives could deliver babies with backup from on-call doctors and a standby perinatal unit at the hospital, but state health officials have yet to approve it… Click here for more.

By Bethany Doudna, Oct 19, 2024. Healthcare during pregnancy is vitally important, but the style of care can look different depending on what route you choose. Alaska, in particular, has the highest density of midwife practice, with 2022 statistics listing 11 midwives per thousand Alaskan births…. Click here for more.

By Bek Shackelford-Nwanganga, Oct 15, 2024.Birthing centers, which offer natural, low-intervention births to low-risk moms, are becoming more and more popular. But regardless of demand, they’re struggling to stay open. 

When Kimberly Kleoppel envisioned the birth of her fourth baby, she pictured warm lighting and a birthing tub…

Click here for more.

By Kristen Hwang, Aug 26, 2024. Colorful collages line the hallways of Best Start Birth Center in San Diego, the squishy faces of hundreds of newborns carefully cut out and framed. A picture of executive director Karen Roslie’s son, born in 2003, hangs among the smiling, crying and squinting babies.

Thirty years ago, Roslie’s mother, Roberta Frank, opened Best Start after training to become a certified nurse midwife… Click here for more.

By Ronnie Cohen, Aug 26, 2024. One of California’s two programs for training nurse-midwives has stopped admitting students while it revamps its curriculum to offer only doctoral degrees, a move that’s drawn howls of protest from alumni, health policy experts, and faculty who accuse the University of California of putting profits above public health needs... Click here for more.

Center for Reproductive Rights, July 26, 2024. Native Hawaiian midwives will be able to resume pregnancy and birth care in their communities for now after a state court ruled to temporarily block part of the state’s midwifery restriction law.

The July 23 ruling came in Kahoʻohanohano v. State of Hawaiʻi, brought in February 2024 by the Center for Reproductive Rights, the Native Hawaiian Legal Corporation, and the law firm Perkins Coie to challenge Hawaii’s law. The portion of the law blocked prevents pregnant people from using traditional midwives for their pregnancies and births… Click here for more.

By Annika Inampudi, July 19, 2024. Emily Anesta ended her maternity leave in an unconventional way—testifying at the Massachusetts State House. With a panel of legislators stretched above her and a newborn in her lap, Anesta recounted the story of her home birth. This was her (and her baby’s) first time in the halls of the State House. Anesta was trained as an engineer, a far cry from the world of amendments and articles. But, for Anesta, the cause was worth the whiplash: she was campaigning for professional midwife licensure, a measure that would legitimize the work of midwives who do not work in hospitals… Click here for more.

By Lesley McClurg, KQED Forum, July 13, 2024. In the last decade California hospitals have shut down nearly 50 maternity wards, leaving pregnant people in large swaths of the state without a place to deliver their babies. That’s according to an ongoing CalMatters investigation which has found that the closures have accelerated in the last four years as hospitals cite high costs, labor shortages and declining birth rates. We look at the scope of the problem and who’s most affected – and how midwives and birthing centers are advocating for solutions. And we’ll hear from you: Have you had trouble accessing maternity care, or have you had to travel a long distance to give birth?

Guests: Kristen Hwang, health reporter, CalMatters

Holly Smith, certified nurse-midwife and co-lead, Midwifery Access California

Click here for audio podcast.

By Catherine Ho, June 23, 2024. UCSF is ending its long-standing and esteemed master’s program for nurse midwives in favor of a doctorate program that many alumni and others in the field say will take longer and cost more to complete — making it harder for people to become midwives at a time maternal health workers are needed more than ever.

Founded in 1988, the UCSF midwifery master’s program is one of the oldest in the country, and one of just two such midwifery education programs in the state. It has trained a significant portion of the nurse midwives in the Bay Area. Students on track to graduate next year will be the final cohort in the master’s program. Click here for more. If you hit a paywall, click here.

By Erin T. Welsh, May 19, 2024. The number of deliveries attended by DOs, nursing midwives and non-nursing midwives has increased while use of standard MDs decreased in the past several decades, especially after COVID-19, a speaker reported. “While MDs were already decreasing, they started decreasing at a greater rate post-COVID, and certified nurse midwives and other midwives increased at a greater rate post-COVID compared to before,” Brittney Wells, BS, a fourth-year medical student at Creighton University School of Medicine in Omaha, Nebraska, said during a poster presentation at the ACOG Annual Clinical & Scientific Meeting. Click here for more.

By Avital Norman Nathman and Deborah Wage, May14, 2024. Imagine a business where your expenses far outpace your competitors, your outcomes are poor – and worsening – and more than 80% of your failures are preventable. In most cases, investors would run for the hills, and the business in question would go bankrupt. So why are we allowing the American birth industry to stagger along with such substandard performance? For years, pregnant women who survived traumatic childbirth have shared their stories, highlighting the systemic harms and challenges baked into the current birth system. Yet we continue to do worse across the board, with Black and Indigenous women suffering the most. Data show that Black women, for instance, are three times more likely to die from a pregnancy-related cause compared to white women. We’ve shared our stories, we’ve shared our pain and our trauma, but none of that has moved the needle. Click here for more.

By Cindy Krisher Goodman, May 3, 2024. It is 2 a.m. when Brianca Spence slips behind the wheel of her car. The drive to the nearest hospital can stretch as long as an hour, and feel like an eternity when she’s rushing to guide an expecting mother through childbirth. As labor unfolds, Spence will translate the harsh demands of a nurse on duty into calming guidance. She will encourage the woman to ask for pain medication when she needs it or suggest a position change to speed up labor. And, when the mother eventually returns home with a new baby, Spence will be her pillar of support, encouraging her to stick with breastfeeding, or go for her postpartum doctor’s visit. Click here for more.

By Toni Gordon, Apr 29, 2024. The profession of midwifery is centered on a long-standing tradition of providing care to women and birthing people throughout their pregnancies as well as attending to the needs of parents and their infants postpartum. Though midwifery has been shown to reduce perinatal health disparities and help address provider workforce shortages, most people in the United States do not have access to midwives. In fact, according to the American College of Nurse-Midwives, among high-income countries, the United States has the smallest midwifery workforce in the world. Click here for more.

By Eric Boehm, Apr 23, 2024. When Katie Chubb tried to open a new birthing center in Augusta, Georgia, nearly three years ago, she hit an unexpected roadblock. The problem had nothing to do with the trained nurses and physicians that Chubb planned to employ at her Augusta Birth Center. It wasn't that she couldn't find potential patients. And it wasn't—as is sometimes the case—that the state of Georgia said there was no "need" for her services. In fact, the Georgia Department of Community Health, which has authority over those decisions in the state, ruled in December 2021 that her clinic would "enhance the delivery of health services by offering a low cost, high quality alternative for perinatal health care service." Click here for more.

By Tom Joyce, Apr 22, 2024. A certified nurse midwife filed a federal lawsuit against the state of Nebraska this week for preventing her from attending home births or operating without a physician’s permission. Certified nurse midwife (CNM) Heather Swanson is a nurse practitioner. She also serves as the Nebraska affiliate president of the American College of Nurse-Midwives, according to a press release from the Pacific Legal Foundation. Swanson wants to provide childbirth services and thinks mothers should have a choice in where and how they give birth. Click here for more.

By Lauren Winston, Apr 25, 2024. Midwife Clarisa Evans started her practice to empower all members of an expecting family from pregnancy through postpartum. While carrying on the legacy of her great grandmother, Evans has become part of a community that reimagines pregnancy and birth outside of hospitals and inside homes. Click here for more.

By Danielle Campamor, April 2024. By the time Elaine Welteroth neared the end of her first pregnancy, she was completely demoralized by the medical system. The former Teen Vogue editor-in-chief and television host was diagnosed with symphysis pubis dysfunction—a debilitating pregnancy-related condition that can make it difficult and painful to move—and felt isolated by her physicians. “I didn’t feel safe giving birth in the hospital,” Welteroth says. Click here for more.

Apr 15, 2024. According to the CDC, the maternal mortality rate is three times higher for Black women. Elaine Welteroth talks to two women who were influenced by that statistic to explore the midwifery route as a solution. Welteroth also announces the creation of birthFund which is a coalition of families coming together to cover the cost of care for families who want access to midwifery but can't afford it. Click here for more.

By Kristen Hwang, Feb 12, 2024. Madeleine Wisner dreamed of making community midwife services available to all expecting parents regardless of their income when she opened Welcome Home Community Birth Center in south Sacramento. 

But 451 births and five years later, Wisner is packing up her family and moving from California to New Zealand, where government policies are far more favorable to midwifery. She closed her birth center in October... Click here for more.

By Ebony JJ Curry, Oct 30, 2023. In a world that often prides itself on rapid advancement and cutting-edge technology, many Black women in Detroit are reaching back, reconnecting with a deeply rooted tradition that echoes the call of their ancestors: giving birth through midwives. Why is this return significant? Historically, Black midwives have played a crucial role in the American birthing landscape. Long before hospital births became the norm, these women served their communities, providing vital care to mothers and babies when racial disparities left them overlooked and underserved. Click here for more.

By Jose Cortez, Oct 20, 2023. SAN SEBASTIAN TUTLA, Mexico, Oct 20 (Reuters) - At a dusty migrant camp in southern Mexico, 19-year-old Luzmar Rodriguez is leaning on a reclined seat at the back of a gray van while a midwife presses a stethoscope against her stomach.

"It's the first time I've heard the baby's heartbeat," she said.

As record numbers of migrants looking to reach the United States trek the perilous Darien Gap jungles between Colombia and Panama, many have reported rapes. A growing number of those making the journey are children. Click here for more.

By Stephanie Mitchell-Avital and Norman Nathan, Oct 18, 2023. The United States is in the midst of a maternal health care crisis, one made even worse by states who refuse to listen to those who have been in the birth trenches for centuries: midwives. This is currently playing out in real time in Alabama, where the state’s Department of Public Health missed the opportunity to alleviate the maternal health care emergency residents are facing. According to a recent March of Dimes study, 37.3% of counties in Alabama are considered a “maternal care desert” and 31.3% have low or moderate access to maternal care. This means that almost 70% of the population is living in areas without a hospital or birth center, making access to appropriate preventive, prenatal and postpartum care difficult. On top of this scarcity of care, Alabama has the third highest rate of maternal mortality and the fifth highest rate of infant mortality in the country. State officials should be doing everything in their power to fix this. Instead, recent news reports indicate that three hospitals in the state will soon close their maternity units, including one in a predominantly Black neighborhood. Click here for more.

By KNAU Staff, Oct 16, 2023. New bipartisan legislation aims to increase the number of trained midwives in the state.

The Midwives for Maximizing Optimal Maternity Services or MOMS Act is focused on improving health outcomes and reducing maternal and infant mortality rates statewide. It establishes grants to create midwife training programs at higher education institutions, including the University of Arizona’s Nurse-Midwifery specialty program. It prepares certified nurse-midwives to independently provide care during pregnancy, childbirth and postpartum. The MOMS Act will offer incentives for students, as well as medically underserved areas, including tribal and rural communities, to stain in Arizona and practice midwifery. The legislation was cosponsored by Senator Kyrsten Sinema with bipartisan support.Click here for more.

By Daily Republic Staff, Oct 12, 2023. State Sen. Bill Dodd is having a pretty good week when it comes to getting his legislation signed into law. Gov. Gavin Newsom, with two more signatures, brought to five the number of Dodd-authored bills that have become law. Newsom signed Senate Bill 387, which will give state General Services more flexibility in leasing its property for broadband infrastructure, and signed SB 667, which "cuts through redundant requirements that might otherwise limit a certified nurse midwife from practicing to the full extent of their scope and training as the original law intended," a statement released by Dodd's Office said. Click here for more.

ACLU, Sep 30, 2023. The Fifteenth Judicial Circuit Court issued a ruling today blocking the Alabama Department of Public Health (ADPH) from continuing to prevent the operation of midwife-led birth centers in Alabama. The ruling means Oasis Family Birthing Center in Birmingham, Alabama Birth Center in Huntsville, Birth Sanctuary in Gainesville, and any other birth center complying with standards set by the American Association of Birth Centers can secure licenses from ADPH to operate — and providers will be able to resume serving pregnant Alabamians with much-needed pregnancy care. Click here for more.

Emily Baumgaertner, Sep 30, 2023. Some say the facilities, which focus on autonomy in childbirth, could lead to better health outcomes — but officials are tightening rules, citing risk.

Gabrielle Glaze felt scolded and shamed when she delivered her first son in a Birmingham, Ala., hospital, forced to observe strict rules about lying stationary through her contractions and enduring countless cervical checks from “total strangers” who seemed disappointed by her body’s progress. Click here for more.

By Annalisa Merelli, Sep 18, 2023. In the wake of growing alarm over the disproportionately high rates of maternal mortality in the U.S., maternal health experts have been pushing for changes — including expanding the midwife workforce. Studies have shown that deliveries attended by midwives tend to have fewer complications and better outcomes, partially because midwife training relies less on medical intervention, leading to fewer C-sections. Click here for more.

By Antonio De Wolk, May 14, 2023. In the early to mid 1970’s, the midwife was a radical concept that challenged the orthodoxy of hospital-controlled birth. The State of California had stopped issuing Midwife licenses in 1949, and only three older, certified midwives remained in the entire state, and 99.4% of babies were delivered in hospitals, mostly by white male doctors. The Women’s Movement of the 1970’s took on this supremacy, with support from UC San Francisco nurses and physicians being central to their efforts… Click here for more.

By Erika Cruz Guevarra, Jehlen Herdman, and Maria Esquinca, Mar 17, 2023. The U.S. ranks 55th in the world in maternal mortality rates. Those rates are even worse for Black women, whose maternal mortality rate is more than two times higher than any other racial or ethnic group. Patients and advocates cite lower access to quality care and racism in the medical system as main drivers of these outcomes. A program in Alameda County is providing an answer to that problem. BElovedBIRTH Black Centering, operating through the Alameda Health System, is completely rethinking what birthing looks like for Black folks. The program provides group perinatal care by, for, and with Black people — and it’s leading to better outcomes for the families involved. Listen here.

By Sarah Sloat, Nov 20, 2022. Climate leadership is failing, though not for want of ideas. Still, the loudest suggestions, like shifting to renewable energy and eating more sustainably, can overshadow another climate solution that experts and lived experience suggest can help: birth workers, such as midwives and doulas. Investment in these workers, in turn, advances another human right under threat: reproductive justice... Click here for more.

By Lauren K. Hall & Elise Amez-Droz, Nov 12, 2022. In the wake of the Supreme Court overturning Roe v. Wade, maternal mortality is on the minds of many Americans. The United States has long been worst-in-class among developed nations in maternal mortality, and maternal care access keeps getting worse. There’s never been a better time to act. The first step is empowering the professionals who can help change this situation, which some simple federal rule changes can help accomplish... Click here for more.

By Kate Nelson, Nov 3, 2022. Rebekah Dunlap didn’t realize just how disconnected she was from Ojibwe birthing traditions until her son was born in a hospital in 2007. Although the 45-year-old Two Spirit nurse midwife grew up on Minnesota’s Fond du Lac Reservation, her family lost touch with these customs generations back, when her late grandparents’ boarding school experiences stripped them of their cultural knowledge and supplanted it instead with Catholic teachings. It was while Dunlap was raising her infant son as a single mother that she made it her mission to decolonize Native American birthing practices, including her dream to open the first birth center on a U.S. Indian reservation. Click here for more.

October 10, 2022. Nurse practitioners [and nurse-midwives ] will soon be allowed to perform first trimester abortions in California without the supervision of a doctor… Click here for more.

October 10, 2022. Senate President pro Tempore Toni G. Atkins (D-San Diego), fellow legislators, and reproductive rights leaders from across the state gathered in San Diego today to celebrate Pro Tem Atkins’ bill, SB 1375 being signed into law… Pro Tem Atkins’ SB 1375, which was signed into law on September 27, will allow qualified nurse practitioners and certified nurse-midwives to provide first trimester abortions … Click here for more.

By Ann Ledbetter, Oct 12, 2022. After pushing for several hours, my patient looks exhausted but happy, clutching her seconds-old newborn to her chest. As I help her put her baby to breast for the first time, she isn’t thinking about anything other than the tiny human blinking up at her. As well she shouldn’t. She doesn’t know that this birth would have happened by C-section at most American hospitals, something that would have put her at risk for a host of complications and virtually guaranteed that any future births would also be by C-section. But I do. Click here for more.

By Neesa Sonoquie, September 13, 2022. Kathleen Belzer was awakened to her future path and passion as an undergraduate while working briefly with a midwife at Enloe Medical Center. Already drawn to the sciences and working with people, she was especially intrigued by maternity, birth, and newborns. She was also struck by how this midwife was allowed to work independently as she cared for patients and able to support the entire birthing process in a personal way. This was Belzer’s lightbulb moment.. Click here for more.

By Emily Alpert Reyes, July 18, 2022. When Ariela Schnyer was choosing where to get trained as a nurse-midwife, California stood out for an important reason: The state would allow clinicians like her to provide abortions. But three years later, after graduating from her nurse-midwifery program at UC San Francisco, Schnyer is not yet prepared to provide abortions that require hands-on care. After the news broke that Roe vs. Wade had been overturned — a shift that is expected to send more abortion patients to California — Schnyer was trying to find out whether she could get trained in Mexico City... Click here for more.

By Crystal Good, June 17, 2022. When I was giving birth to my second child in 1999, I had a Black doula by my side, Pia Long . Before I met her, I didn’t know what a doula was; much less that as a Black woman, her presence could increase my odds of having a successful birth. I just thought to have a baby, you go to a hospital. But Long told me there was another way. She told me the history of Black doulas and the traditional folk medicines practiced by Black women for years. At the time, Long was the only Black doula in West Virginia. Since then, like so many of my West Virginia friends, she and her family left… Click here for more.

May 16, 2022. The School of Nursing and the midwifery community mourn the untimely passing of Betty Johnson Snell, Professor Emeritus in the School of Nursing. Snell joined the CSUF community in 2002 and subsequently developed the Midwifery and Women’s Health Nurse Practitioner Graduate Program in 2006. Along with teaching in these Graduate Programs, Snell created and was the owner and clinical director of Beach Cities Midwifery and Women’s Health Care and the Beach Side Birth Centers in Laguna Hills, Long Beach, and Corona. Snell was a midwife, an educator, a mentor, an advocate, a wife, and a mother loved by all. Her impact on women’s health education and the midwifery profession is indelible and her legacy lives on through all the lives she has touched. She is greatly missed.

By United Nations, May, 5, 2022. Today, 5 May 2022, marks International Day of the Midwife, an important day for women, adolescents and newborns worldwide. Midwives can meet about 90 per cent of the need for essential sexual, reproductive, maternal, newborn and adolescent health interventions. They strengthen the health and well-being of women, adolescents and newborns and put safe and effective care within the reach of more people. This contributes to women’s empowerment and gender equality. Click here for more.

By Liz Weber, March 26, 2022. Jennifer Hill, an American Studies professor at Montana State University, began the research on what would become her book, “Birthing the West: Mothers and Midwives in the Rockies and Plains,” she expected to uncover one or two outstanding stories to highlight. Instead she found a network of women who traveled to the homes of expecting mothers and then stayed for extended periods of time to provide postpartum care. “It wasn’t a story of individual overcomers. It was a story of a hidden infrastructure of so many people who were doing this,” Hill said. Click here for more.

By Gianna Seltzer & Eric Salgado, Feb 3, 2022. The lack of cost-effective and quality healthcare for women of color in California has become its own epidemic in recent years. Maternal and infant mortality rates remain high in low-income and minority communities, as many Black and Indigenous women face racial, economic and environmental disparities and healthcare professionals deal with a shortage of resources to serve these communities. Click here for more.

By Ariane Lange, January 3, 2022. Sue Wolcott watched with excitement as California passed a law that would let licensed midwives like her become Medi-Cal providers in 2014. In her small town in Siskiyou County, she renovated an office, full of hope she would be able to serve birthing people in far Northern California. The new place should be cozy, she thought, and she painted the walls of the birthing center a soothing shade of blue. Then she spent the next seven years burning through $200,000 in personal savings as she tried to get Medi-Cal to pay for her work… Click here for more.

By Ariane Lange, Jan 2, 2022. Juliana Flamporis’ pregnancy wasn’t exactly welcome news. She was homeless, and she hadn’t yearned for a child. At 25, she was regularly using meth as she bounced around Mt. Shasta in 2018, dumpster-diving and carrying an enormous backpack and a knife everywhere she went. She did have a sense of clarity, though: After a few bad experiences, she had grown to hate hospitals. She wanted a water birth… Click here for more.

By Rosanna Davis, Jan 2, 2022. The COVID pandemic brought dramatic increases in online searches for information related to home birth as well as the number of Americans who went on to give birth outside hospitals. As specialists in community-based maternity care in private homes and freestanding birth centers, California’s licensed midwives have long been answering this call, both from parents concerned about the pandemic and from people living in maternal care “deserts” that would otherwise leave them with no provider at all. Yet the medical lobby continues to push for legislation that would further restrict access to licensed midwives and enshrine physicians as the arbiters of when and how pregnant people qualify for midwifery care…Click here for more.

By Sarah Nevis, Dec 28, 2021. Midwife Madeleine Wisner and client Destinee Campbell talk on Dec. 9, 2021, about the birthing experience at Welcome Home Midwifery Services in Sacramento. Wisner is the only licensed midwife in Sacramento who takes Medi-Cal. Watch video here.

By M. Spencer Green, Dec 8, 2021. For the past year or so, Toni Hill, a midwife in the lowlands of northern Mississippi, has received an influx of calls from women across the state who live in areas with no hospitals and only a smattering of health care providers. As COVID-19 rates increased, some pregnant women did not feel safe receiving care in a hospital or were unable to contact their providers. Others, who lived in the Mississippi Delta, did not have transportation for the three-plus hour trip to Jackson, the state capital. Hill quickly found herself very overwhelmed, she said…. Click here for more.

By Marina Starleaf Riker, Nov 28, 2021. Tanisha Tyler knew she was moments away from giving birth, but in that moment, as the strongest contraction yet crashed through her body, she felt helpless. With her midwife and husband at her side, Tyler was getting ready to labor in the tub at the birthing center, a brick home on a quiet country road between San Antonio and New Braunfels. Then another wave of contractions came, even more intense than the last. Click here for more.

By Karen Breslau, Nov 24, 2021. Longtime Berkeley resident Rebekah Kaplan died Nov. 16 of injuries sustained in a cycling accident in the Oakland Hills. “Please focus on the fact that we had a sage, badass, prescient, and solidly-grounded being in our midst,” her husband David Burk wrote in a message of Thanksgiving to family and friends. “Rebekah was the greatest of gifts and taking her spirit and legacy forward is our family’s greatest wish for you.” Kaplan, a midwife for more than 30 years, held joint appointments at the UCSF School of Medicine and the School of Nursing and was a certified nurse-midwife at UCSF San Francisco General Hospital. Click here for more. Click here to donate to the Rebekah Kaplan Legacy Bipoc Scholarship Fund.

Produced by Dante Miller for “Charlotte Talks” – a podcast from WFAE, Charlotte’s NPR News Source, Oct 26, 2021. Throughout the U.S., Black mothers and babies are dying at horrific rates, especially in North Carolina. According to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, Black women are three to four times more likely to die from pregnancy-related issues than white women. Black women in North Carolina are two times more likely to die from complications in pregnancy…. Listen here.

By Jane Seyd, Oct 26, 2021. Gillian Welsh was one of the first North Shore midwives to become registered in B.C. She's retiring from the profession after four decades of helping babies into the world….Click here for more.

By Hannah Summers, Oct 26, 2021. Zahra Mirzaei pioneered ‘groundbreaking’ maternity services in Kabul, but has been forced to flee. She says she won’t stop fighting for dignified care for Afghanistan’s women and girls…. Click here for more.

By Caroline Kubzansky, Oct 22, 2021. The Illinois Senate approved a measure to reinstate licensure for certified professional midwives, or CPMs, this week. It likely spells the end of a decades-long campaign for midwives to practice legally in the state… Click here for more.

By Kim Bjorquez, Oct 4, 2021. Gov. Gavin Newsom on Monday signed a law aimed at improving maternal and postpartum care for Black California families who have disproportionately suffered pregnancy-related and infant deaths in recent years. Click here for more.

Oct 4, 2021. SB 65, aka the California Momnibus Act, aims to close the existing racial gaps in maternal and infant mortality rates. Legislation furthers California’s commitment to reproductive freedom and safety and advances the state’s equity goals by addressing systemic racism. Click here for more.

By Olga Grigoryants, Sep 17, 2021. More women have been opting for home birth as hospitals postponed or moved most of their healthcare online due to COVID, barring partners and often leaving women to deliver and recover alone. And many women chose home delivery because they were worried about being exposed to the virus at hospitals. Click here for more.

By Olga Grigoryants, Sep 5, 2021. There are systems in place in California that make it almost impossible to have a birth center. It’s like a never-ending cycle,' says one midwife… Click here for more.

By Sandy Banks, Aug 18, 2021. Allegra Hill knew she wanted to be a midwife long before she knew exactly what the term meant. Her mother had delivered her with the help of a midwife, and “every birthday I would hear my birth story … and how giving birth was the best day of her life,” Hill said… Click here for more.

By Dania Maxwell, Aug 18, 2021. Last summer, as deaths from the COVID-19 pandemic were spiking, I was looking for a story about life when I came across a GoFundMe page where two Black midwives, Allegra Hill and Kimberly Durdin, were raising money for a birth center called Kindred Space LA in Hyde Park... Click here for more.

By Olga Grigoryants, Aug 13, 2021. Many of LA County’s programs focus on addressing the consequences of intergenerational racism on the health of Black women.

Aysha-Samon Stokes’ Mother’s Day went just as planned. She arrived at Kindred Space LA birth center around 10 p.m. on May 9, stepped into a bathtub and shortly before midnight pushed her newborn son, Nikko, into the arms of her boyfriend, Dennis Richmond… Click here for more.

By Nina Martin, Mar 19, 2020. Over the next three months, nearly a million women in the United States will give birth to nearly a million babies — a huge influx of mostly healthy, highly vulnerable patients into a hospital system that’s about to come under unprecedented strain… Click here for more.

The U.S. has the highest rate of deaths related to pregnancy and childbirth in the developed world. Half of the deaths are preventable, victimizing women from a variety of races, backgrounds, educations and income levels. Click here for full series.

By Nina Martin, Feb 22, 2018. In Great Britain, midwives deliver half of all babies, including Kate Middleton’s first two children, Prince George and Princess Charlotte. In Sweden, Norway and France, midwives oversee most expectant and new mothers, enabling obstetricians to concentrate on high-risk births. In Canada and New Zealand, midwives are so highly valued … Click here for more.

By Emily Bobrow, Dec 22, 2019. The sun was still rising on a brisk Monday morning in October last year when Sunday Smith, a midwife in New York’s North Country, pulled into the gravel driveway of a small dairy farm, scattering some chickens. She had driven for about ninety minutes, along dark country roads, for a prenatal appointment with Jennifer, who was twenty-nine weeks pregnant with her fourth child… Click here for more.

By The Editors of Scientific American, Feb 1, 2019. Despite the astronomical sums that the U.S. spends on maternity care, mortality rates for women and infants are significantly higher in America than in other wealthy countries. And because of a shortage of hospitals and ob-gyns, especially in rural areas, many women struggle to access proper care during pregnancy… Click here for more.

AHS has been providing midwife led services for more than 40 years, but the practice of midwifery is not new and in fact Black midwives have played a leading role in providing care during labor and delivery for thousands of women dating back to the 1600s. The granny midwives were well respected Black women from the South who provided care to poor… Click here for more.

A deeper look at history explains why when it comes to midwife use, the US falls behind other affluent countries. Click here for video.

By Olga Grigoryants, Aug 16, 2021. The growing awareness of disparities in pregnancy-related deaths for Black women combined with changing visitation policies in hospitals during the pandemic has fueled a demand for Black midwives. Click here for more.

By Jennifer Block, Mar 2020. New York midwife Elizabeth Catlin faces 95 individual felony counts at her upcoming trial. For what? For doing her job. Politics and patriarchy make the work of many credentialed, experienced midwives illegal — to the detriment of women and underserved communities… Click here for more.

By Lucas Jackson, June 12, 2015. When Kelly LeGendre found out in 2012 that she was pregnant with her first child, the Arizona resident, then 34, knew she needed to seek prenatal care. Unlike most American mothers, however, LeGendre didn’t seek out an obstetrician. Instead, she opted for a midwife… Click here for more.