MAMA Campaign Webinar!

MAMA Has Good News to Share!

Join Us for a Webinar on December 3rd to Learn All About It!

Register at https://www2.gotomeeting.com/register/709957571.

Our federal lobbyist, Billy Wynne will join representatives from the Campaign Steering Committee, on Thursday, December 3rd, for an exciting webinar about the MAMA Campaign at 8 pm EST. Please note that this is a new date. The webinar was previously scheduled for the beginning of Thanksgiving week, but that week was too busy for too many of our supporters so we have postponed the date a week to accommodate our supporters.

MAMA has good news to share! The effort to secure federal recognition of CPMs got a big boost this week – language beneficial to CPMs is included in the Senate health care bill just released on Wednesday, November 18th. And MAMA is still hard at work to include our amendment to reimburse CPMs in the federal Medicaid program in the final bill that will go to the President to be signed early next year.

You are invited to join us to hear:

* What this new language in the Senate bill will mean for midwives and
mothers across the country

* The impressive support for CPMs that MAMA has built among key
legislators over the last six months, that will serve midwives and
mothers well for years to come

* About the most successful fundraising campaign for midwifery ever!

* What the next steps are this year for Federal recognition for CPMs


It is easy to participate in the webinar!
Visit https://www2.gotomeeting.com/register/709957571 to register and
receive easy steps to join us. And during the webinar MAMA wants to answer your questions: email a question to info@mamacampaign.org and put “Webinar Question Submission” in the subject line.

We look forward to your participation!

MAMA thanks you for your support. If you have any questions, concerns or
comments please contact the campaign at info@mamacampaign.org.

Call your legislator today!

Courtesy of the Big Push for Midwives:

Now that the House has passed health care reform legislation WITHOUT CPMs included, it has become clear that we need our OWN bill. The Senate is our best hope to do that.

Please call your Senators today and ask them to take the lead in introducing a BILL to provide Medicaid payment of Certified Professional Midwife services.

To find your Senators and their contact information, go to:

http://tinyurl.com/b1lm

OR


Call the U.S. Capitol Switchboard at (202) 224-3121 and ask for your Senators' offices.

Midwives and other childbirth professionals: It's very important to pass this action alert to your clients and ask them to make calls TODAY!

A separate bill for CPMs gives us many more options for ensuring that their services are federally recognized and covered and it allows us to recruit supporters from BOTH parties!

Keep trying if you don't get through. Call AGAIN even if you've called already-it takes more than one call! LOTS of groups are calling their Senators about health care reform today-support for Certified Professional Midwives and out-of-hospital maternity care needs to get heard through all the noise!

Ask to speak with your Senator's legislative health assistant. Be sure to get his/her name. This is critical information for us to follow-up with the staff.

Please note that emails and messages left with receptionists are not effective!

Ask that your Senator take the lead in introducing a bill to provide Medicaid payment for the services of Certified Professional Midwives, who are the only type of midwife in the U.S. with specialized training in out-of-hospital maternity care.

Call or email Karen Fennell and tell her who you talked with and any comments or additional information requested so she can follow up with offices. Call 301-830-3910 or send an email to karenfennell50@yahoo.com

Some background information and talking points to add if you wish:

§ Pregnant women are being denied access to maternity care thanks to an oversight in Medicaid law that denies low-income women who seek out-of-hospital maternity care access to Certified Professional Midwives (CPMs) in all but 11 states.

§ Because of this gap in Medicaid law, thousands of women in states across the country unable to utilize the services of providers with a proven record of improving outcomes.

§ Denying pregnant women access to Certified Professional Midwives saddles our health care system with hundreds of millions of dollars in additional costs each year.

§ Across the country in rural and urban communities, Certified Professional Midwives are already meeting the needs of pregnant women and their infants who have nowhere else to go at a time when many other maternity care providers have abandoned these communities to practice in more affluent suburbs and exurbs.

§ Demand for access to out-of-hospital birth under the care of Certified Professional Midwives-who are specially trained to provide it-has increased 27% since 1996.

§ Research consistently shows that low-risk women who plan out-of-hospital births under the care of Certified Professional Midwives experience outcomes equal to low-risk women who give birth in the hospital, but with far fewer costly and preventable interventions, including a five-fold decrease in cesarean surgery.

§ Certified Professional Midwives have a proven history of reducing low birth weight and preterm birth, the main causes of neonatal death in the United States and two of the primary contributing factors to racial and ethnic disparities in birth outcomes, as well as to the costs associated with long-term care.

Grassroots Network...Take Action!!

Dear Friends,

As the Senate and House are in the final weeks and days of preparing their Health Reform bills for floor debate, THIS IS THE TIME to write letters and anything else you can do to make sure your Senators and Representatives in Washington, DC, know that you want CPMs included at the federal level!

This e-mail includes three things to as soon as possible!

1. The MAMA Campaign continues working in DC to have Certified Professional Midwives included on the federal list of Medicaid Providers. Please write a brief letter to your Senators and Representatives today! They need to hear from their constituents! Even if you think your Congress people have already decided not to vote for any health reform bill, write to them anyway about CPMs. You can find all the needed information (including sample letter language and links for finding who your representative and senators are and how to contact them) at the Take Action page of the MAMA Campaign website: http://www.mamacampaign.org/contact-your-legislator/

2. The National Women's Law Center has produced a brief video "A Woman Is Not a Preexisting Condition!" that you can see at: http://awomanisnotapreexistingcondition.com/
They have an email setup right on that page to send emails to Congress about this issue, which has a section to add your own words. This is a great opportunity to add some sentences about CPMs, birth centers, and out of hospital birth in general. Thanks to Susan Jenkins for sending this information!

3. The Big Push for Midwives is encouraging everyone to sign their petition supporting CPMs and out-of-hospital birth. This is easy to do, and you are encouraged to forward this request to others. The petition sign-up is at: http://tinyurl.com/Support-CPMs-Petition. Find the full text of the Big Push notice at the end of this message.


This is our chance! Let's make sure Congress "gets it" about Certified Professional Midwives!

Sincerely,
Susan Hodges, "gatekeeper"

Cookie Day!

The Friends of Missouri Midwives annual Cookie Day at the Capitol was great! We had many wonderful speakers, including Jennifer Block, the author of Pushed. There were tons of families and bags galore of beautifully packaged homemade cookies. How exciting it was for those of us who were visiting the Capitol for the first time since Midwifery became legal! For the official story and some pictures, go to the FoMM blog.
On a personal note, it was fun for me to go back again. I actually missed walking the endless halls and talking to the various legislators, even though some of them were devils in disguise. It was a bit more tedious with a five week old in tow, but he slept contentedly for most of the day.

Lobbying at the Capitol

Yesterday my friend and I went to the Capitol to lobby for the Midwifery bill. For more information on this bill, click here. It was so frustrating to be told, yet again, that I am too stupid to make an informed decision about where and with whom to give birth. What right does anyone, especially a man who will NEVER give birth, have to tell me what I can and can not do with my body? Birth is such a sacred event and used to be viewed as such. Women in the childbearing year were revered and honored as the blessed beings they were. Now days, though, we are treated like a diseased person who has a tumor that needs to be removed.
Representative Brad Robinson said he could not support our bill because his doctors had shown him some bad transfers from homebirths. When asked for specifics, he could not think of any. Of course, he was trying to watch some sports on TV so maybe he just didn't hear the question correctly. We asked him what about women's rights? He said "I am for some women's rights"!!! Remember this ladies, Rep. Brad Robinson only supports SOME of your rights. If you'd like to send him a comment, click here.
Kudos to Representative Steve Hodges for supporting our bill. He welcome us into his office and even gave us a parting gift, locally grown rice! Send him a little thank you.
If you live in the Campbell area or surrounding communities, please contact Representative Thomas Todd. He needs to know that those of you in his area want Midwifery decriminalized!
Representative Scott Lipke listened to our points very well but was upfront that he wasn't supportive. I think we made some good headway with helping him understand our position but didn't change his mind. He needs some positive contacts and more education. His concerns were the same old safety, education, and liability. Feel free to remind him, as we did, that there is NO evidence anywhere that hospitals are safer for birthing women-only evidence of the other way around. Again, if you are from his area PLEASE contact him so he knows how important this issue is to you. He seems to be under the impression that homebirth and Midwifery aren't very popular in his area.
All in all, I'm glad we went up there but I always leave angry at the way I've been treated. No one is ever outwardly rude, but it's there just below the surface. I feel as if I'm constantly being told that my right and my opinion doesn't matter. Well, it does! Furthermore, research, history, and personal experience are all on my side.