This year, we assumed you maintained your neutral position about the bill. You can imagine our surprise yesterday to find that only were you not neutral, but you had orchestrated a formidable opposition against our families who were asking for access to midwives. Dr. Peterson, I have to wonder if you know what a Certified Professional Midwife is. Certified Nurse Midwives are already legal in all 50 states, so this is Certified Professional Midwives they're talking about. But I fail to understand why the Virginia Department of Health is actively working to oppose licensure of Certified Professional Midwives.
Unlicensed midwives attend hundreds of home births each year, and that number is growing.
Mainstream magazines like Parenting and Redbook are writing about what a great experience home birth is, and they're directing readers to Certified Professional Midwives. If you refuse to license midwives, fine. There are other US states where midwives are practicing unlicensed and unregulated, and those states see no reason to fix a system that isn't broken. So if Virginia wants to adopt that model, that's acceptable to us. Our midwives can't talk to our doctors, because it puts them both at risk.