"Why don't they listen to us?"

Amidst the swirling news of coronavirus, you may have missed that another midwife has been arrested in New York. Last Thursday, Melissa Carman, CPM was arrested for practicing midwifery without a license and hindering prosecution of another Certified Professional Midwife who was arrested previously.

This is hard information to grapple with as our own bill to license CPMs in Georgia sits for another year. My hope is that this report will encourage you that we are making great progress in a system that is not designed to work in our favor. At the same time, I hope it sobers readers to understand why we need to fight so hard for licensure for the only nationally credentialed provider uniquely trained in out of hospital birth.

“Listen to the voice of the women- the voice of US- we want to choose where and with whom we have our babies. With two arrests, New York state just made their maternity care crisis that much worse.

Why don’t they listen to us?”

-Elizabeth Catlin, CPM, who faces up to 7 years in prison for over 90 felony charges associated with practicing midwifery without a license.

Just last Thursday, Melissa Carman, CPM was also arrested in conjunction with this case but also as “part of a statewide witch hunt”. Particularly chilling about this is that Ms. Carman is the president of NYCPM, New York’s organization to promote licensure for the Certified Professional Midwife.

You are encouraged to read this account of the situation as it thoroughly exposes how this could happen to any CPM in Georgia as well.

So what is going on with our bill, HB910?

So glad you asked!

First, let’s review how a BILL becomes a LAW. First it gets assigned a bill number. Ours is HB910 (when you see documents on the internet lettered and numbered like this, it is because it is not the law…yet). Every bill must pass through the House and the Senate, but it can start on either side. Ours is originating in the Georgia House. Every bill gets assigned to a committee and must pass with a majority vote out of committee. Then it must pass through “Rules” to the floor for a vote (in our case, the House floor). This must happen before crossover day which is this Thursday. At that point it would cross over to the other “side”, in our case the Senate, where it also passes through a committee and to the Senate floor for a vote.

You remember that our bill, HB910, got assigned to the Regulated Industries committee which has a subcommittee, Occupational Licensing. The chairman of that committee, Representative Jason Ridley, did not call a vote. We are certain that the subcommittee vote would have been favorable, but he does not want to rush our bill through. We appreciate this! It gives us more time to work on some other supportive measures and make sure that our bill is worded perfectly for Georgia families and midwives.

Our legislative team is working on a lot of behind the scenes meetings and planning for next session already. We are proud of how much progress our bill made, as some bills sit and never even make it to a committee hearing!

Thank you for your support. We are not done and our bill is not over! We anticipate making even greater strides next year with HB910!

In the meantime, we really need donations so that we can continue this work. We have a brilliant team of lobbyists working with us and for us.

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