A dispute about what state agency would regulate midwives keeps the issue stalled in the state senate.

Supporters say midwives need to be licensed by the state as independent practitioners to help women who want to have their babies at home. The law now says they must have collaborative practices with doctors.

Senator John Loudon’s original plan to let midwives regulate themselves has run aground. Senator Chuck Graham wants them under the State Board of Registration for the Healing Arts. But Loudon says that board is controlled by doctors who don’t want to give any business to midwives. He proposes having the Department of Insurance regulate them.

Graham says the board regulates medical professionals and midwives are in that category. Loudon maintains that might not be correct, noting, “There is a certain amount of debate…that delivering a baby is not an illness. It’s not a medical procedure.”

Graham says Loudon’s bill does more than let midwives catch babies, though, because it also allows the midwives to inject medicines–putting midwives clearly into the medical practitioner area. Loudon says the midwives could not inject a woman with anything not approved by a doctor.

The two have thrown charges of hypocrisy and of circulating misleading information at each other. Time is getting to be too short in this session for these two to find any middle ground.

 

Download Bob Priddy’s story (:63 mp3)