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PushNews from The Big Push for Midwives Campaign
CONTACT: Steff Hedenkamp, (816) 506-4630, steff@...
FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE: Monday, September 1, 2008
Number Two With a Bullet
Critical Women's Health Issues Neglected as Physician Group Yet Again Setsits Sites on Midwives

WASHINGTON, D.C. (September 1, 2008)-In the newest phase of its ongoingeffort to deny women the right to choose their maternity careproviders andbirth settings, the American College of Obstetricians and Gynecologists(ACOG) has announced that eliminating access to midwives who specialize inout-of-hospital birth is now the second most important issue on its statelegislative agenda. This move puts restricting access to trained midwivesahead of such critical issues as contraceptive equity, ensuring access toemergency contraception, and the prevention and treatment of perinatalHIV/AIDS."ACOG claims to be an advocate of women's health and choice, but when itcomes to the right to choose to deliver your baby in the privacy ofyour ownhome with a Certified Professional Midwife (CPM) who is specificallytrainedto provide the safest care possible, ACOG's paternalistic colors bleedthrough," said Susan M. Jenkins, Legal Counsel for the Big Push forMidwivesCampaign. "It is astonishing that an organization that purports to be achampion of women's healthcare would put a petty turf battle that affectsless than one percent of the nation's childbearing women ahead of pressingissues that have an impact on nearly every woman in this country. Ifthis isnot dereliction of duty, I can't imagine what is."In recent years, ACOG has led a well-financed campaign to fightlegislativereforms that would license and regulate CPMs and has now teamed upwith theAmerican Medical Association (AMA) to promote legislation that wouldpreventfamilies from choosing to give birth at home. Despite these joint efforts,the groups have not been successful in defeating the groundswell ofgrassroots activism in support of full access to a comprehensive range ofmaternity care options that meet the needs of all families."Wisconsin is a good example of what ACOG and the AMA are up against,"saidJane Crawford Peterson, CPM, Advocacy Trainer for The Big Push. "Ourbipartisan grassroots coalition of everyday people from across the statemanaged to defeat the most powerful and well-financed special interestgroups in Wisconsin, all on an expenses-only budget of $3000 during alegislative session in which $47 million was spent on lobbying. Whenyou tryto deny women the fundamental and very personal right to choose where andhow to give birth, they will get organized and they will let their electedofficials know that restrictions on those rights cannot stand."Noting these successes, ACOG has recently launched its own grassrootsorganizing effort, calling on member physicians to recruit theirpatients toparticipate in its "Who Will Deliver My Baby?" medical liability reformcampaign."ACOG itself admits that we're facing a critical shortage of maternitycareproviders," said Steff Hedenkamp, Communications Coordinator for the BigPush. "They certainly realize that medical liability reform is nothingmorethan a band aid and that increasing access to midwives and birthsettings iscritical to fixing our maternity care system and ensuring that rural,low-income and uninsured women don't fall through the cracks. Midwivesrepresent an essential growth segment of the U.S. pool of maternity careproviders, but instead of putting the healthcare needs of women first,ACOGwould rather devote its considerable lobbying budget to a last-ditchattemptto protect its own bottom line. This is not a happy Labor Day for ournation's mothers and babies."The Big Push for Midwives ( <http://www.thebigpushformidwives.org/>http://www.TheBigPushforMidwives.org) is a nationally coordinated campaignorganized to advocate for regulation and licensure of CertifiedProfessionalMidwives (CPMs) in all 50 states, the District of Columbia and PuertoRico,and to push back against the attempts of the American Medical Associationand the American College of Obstetricians and Gynecologists to denyAmericanfamilies access to safe and legal midwifery care. The campaign plays acritical role in building a new model of U.S. maternity care deliveryat thelocal and regional levels, at the heart of which is the Midwives Model ofCare, based on the fact that pregnancy and birth are normal lifeprocesses.Media inquiries: Steff Hedenkamp (816) 506-4630,<mailto:steff@...> steff@... #####The Big Push for Midwives Campaign is fiscally sponsored by SustainableMarkets Foundation, a not-for-profit organization recognized as tax-exemptunder Internal Revenue Code section 501(c)(3). The mission of the Big Pushfor Midwives is to build winning, state-level advocacy campaigns towardssuccessful regulation and licensure of Certified Professional Midwives(CPMs) in all 50 states, the District of Columbia, and Puerto Rico.Visit the Big Push for Midwives Campaign on the Web at<http://ent.groundspring.org/EmailNow/pub.php?module=URLTracker&cmd=track&j=227950734&u=2397811> www.TheBigPushforMidwives.org.Sustainable Markets Foundation 80 Broad Street, Suite 1600 NewYork,NY 10004-2248 The Big Push for Midwives Campaign 2300 M Street, N.W., Suite 800 Washington, D.C. 20037-1434