Midwifery Licensure Debate Set for June 19

This Tuesday, June 19, 2012, the North Carolina House Committee on Health and Human Services will discuss a bill that would grant licensure to Certified Professional Midwives (CPMs) to attend home births in our state. Under current law, midwives in North Carolina must have a nursing degree and an agreement with a supervising physician in order to attend births in hospitals, birthing centers or homes. 

HB 522 – Midwifery Licensing Act would allow direct-entry midwives with very little training and no educational requirements to attend home births without physician supervision, putting North Carolina’s mothers and children at great risk. Just last year North Carolina saw five neonatal deaths as a result of planned homebirth, raising our state’s neonatal death rate for planned home births to more than 12 times the Center for Disease Control’s expected death rate for comparable risk hospital births.

Please contact your House member today and ask them to protect the safety of North Carolina families and oppose HB 522. For a direct link to your legislator and talking points on this issue please click our Action Alert here.

 
 

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