The Big Push for Midwives Campaign

03/22/2026

For those of us Pushers who knew Brielle Epstein, her passing is devastating and heartbreaking news. Her work and life are honored and remembered by those of us who were fortunate enough to walk with her for the time we had together. Brielle embodied LOVE in everything she did and gave of her wisdom and talents and insights and deep care. She was an inspiration to me personally and she tirelessly served The Big Push for Midwives in its earliest tender days. Brielle inspired us and supported our movement as one of our best pioneers. She selflessly shared her hard-won perspectives in Texas and beyond to benefit other states and grassroots advocates. Brielle, words cannot express how much you mean to all of us and how much you will be missed. We offer our sincerest condolences to your family and friends during this difficult time. 🙏🏻

In Memory of My Wife, Brielle Epstein.

01/03/2026

Dearest Pushers,

The Big Push for Midwives and advocates across the country are mourning the passing of Susan M. Jenkins, JD, a founding member of the Big Push for Midwives Campaign.

Susan Jenkins was a friend, mother, grandmother, sister, spouse, and one of the most experienced midwifery law attorneys in the U.S. A graduate of Columbia Law School and former staff attorney at the Federal Trade Commission (a national antitrust enforcement agency), Susan was one of the first women lawyers to argue (and win) a case before the U.S. Supreme Court where she challenged the monopoly on medical care. Susan went on to serve as legal counsel for the American College of Nurse Midwives , the American Association of Birth Centers, the Big Push for Midwives Campaign, and the California Association of Licensed Midwives. She was a partner in The Sanchez Law Firm where she focused on insurance law, professional regulation, licensure, certification and accreditation, clinical privileges, practice-related contract and business issues, and birth center operation and represented individual midwives, birth centers, and other healthcare providers as well as their professional associations, including the New Mexico Midwives Association and the Association of Texas Midwives.

Susan’s work included developing and implementing federal legislation to mandate freestanding birth centers as Medicaid providers, and developing and amending state midwifery licensing laws. She published several articles, including “The Myth of Vicarious Liability: Impact on Barriers to CNM Practice,” (Journal of Nurse-Midwifery, March–April 1994), Nurse-Midwifery Today: A Handbook of State Legislation (1995 edition, published by ACNM), and lectured extensively on such issues at programs like Georgetown University School of Nursing, Catholic University of America, the University of New Mexico, and the International School of Midwifery.

Susan was a member of the Council on Standards of the National Association of Childbearing Centers and on the advisory board of the Developing Families Center, in Washington, D.C. (which went on to partner with and support Community of Hope Family Health and Birth Center).

She was a founding member of the Birth Rights Bar Association (now, Birth Justice Bar) and an advisory board member of Birth Monopoly. At their first conference in 2018, in Chicago, they honored Susan by giving her and creating The Susan Jenkins Award for Advancing Justice in Birth to honor Susan’s enduring contribution to the field, and recognize people whose work has notably advanced rights associated with childbirth including due process, equal protection, bodily autonomy, physical liberty, informed consent and decision-making. The first Susan Jenkins Award for Advancing Justice in Birth was presented to Farah Diaz Tello in 2019.

She was a founding Steering Committee member and Legal Counsel for the Big Push for Midwives Campaign, which she helped to conceive in November 2007 and launch in January 2008 in Chicago. When the BigPush was first getting pushy, only 21 states allowed CPMs to be legally authorized to practice. Today there are 37 states and D.C. that regulate CPMs, and one state where they are legalized. Thanks in no small part to Susan Jenkins and her determined and brilliant efforts, there are only 12 states and three territories to go. Susan always encouraged us to never give up, to never stop pushing until CPMs were legally authorized to practice in all 50 states and territories, and no longer at risk for criminal prosecution for practicing medicine or nursing without a license, which drives the practice of midwifery underground and creates barriers to access for women seeking maternity care.

Susan contributed so very much to so many! Even as Susan’s life is being celebrated, her voice and powerful force of will are deeply missed.

Please share your memories, pictures, stories and condolences, and help us honor Susan’s life and legacy:

Take part in remembering Susan M. Jenkins, JD. Read her obituary, share your own memories, and learn about any funeral details on Ever Loved.

02/15/2024

ICYMI, there are 38 states now where Certified Professional Midwives (CPMs) are legally authorized to practice and provide out-of-hospital birth options and community birth to families.

Today on Valentine's Day, we feel the 💜 here at The Big Push for Midwives Campaign! It all began on the Birth Policy Yahoo Group, which was established in 2004 by Katherine Margaret Hemple, a birth activist who was one of the leaders of the successful efforts to achieve Certified Professional Midwife (CPM) licensure in Wisconsin in 2006, and a pivotal leader in the larger movement.

The conversations on the Birth Policy Yahoo Group frequently turned to advocacy issues, as the group’s participants include many activists—both consumers and midwives—who are committed to promoting the availability of direct-entry midwives.

In late September through early October 2007, Birth Policy Yahoo Group participants began to notice and post about an increasing number of prosecutions and investigations of midwives in several geographically contiguous states.

On October 9, 2007, a new thread began called "Dark Cloud Over the Midwest."

Over the course of about 36 hours, an avalanche of posts, information, and ideas were shared on a clearly growing trend of arrests and investigations of midwives in states that lacked a licensure mechanism for legal status, from Missouri to Pennsylvania, including prosecutions in Pennsylvania, Ohio, Indiana, Kentucky, Iowa, and spreading west to Wyoming.

Information also was shared about American Medical Association House of Delegates’ Resolution 902 from November 2005, which called on state medical boards to begin aggressively pursuing “midlevel providers,” licensed or otherwise, whose actions constitute the practice of medicine.

The AMA founded SOPP at that meeting, effectuating its plan and to lobby against laws that would license unlicensed health professionals or expand the scope of practice of already-licensed non-MD practitioners. See recent "wins" by SOPP: https://www.ama-assn.org/practice-management/scope-practice/ama-successfully-fights-scope-practice-expansions-threaten

Birth Policy members further noticed that, while the prosecutions seemed to be spreading from one state to its close neighbors, the same "viral" phenomenon could be noted for interest in CPMs and the Midwives Model of Care, with increasingly more stories in conventional news media outlets, as well as on blogs and within other social networking groups.

Within a few days of the start of this online discussion in fall 2007, group members developed a desire for an in-person meeting, so that those in the states most affected by prosecutions could work together—sharing information and ideas on what works and what doesn't, lending expertise and experience, and quickly developing advocacy strategy, testimony, handouts, and other strategy tips.

As word spread, more and more participants signaled their intention to join us, including leaders of North American Registry of Midwives (NARM), National Association of Certified Professional Midwives (NACPM), Midwives Alliance of North America, Citizens for Midwifery, and The National Association to Advance Black Birth- NAABB (fka ICTC), as well as members of various state midwifery and friends of midwifery groups, many of whom had revised their plans at the last minute in order to attend.

A small subset of the PushSummit 2007 group organized and planned a meeting for a small group of midwives and activists from the hardest hit states to get together in Chicago a few weeks later in early 2008 (on what was to become PushDay) to do intensive in-person planning and coordination and launch The Big Push for Midwives Campaign. ...

12/29/2021

HAPPY HOLIDAYS FROM ACROSS THE PUSHNATION!

As 2021 comes to a close, we just want to share a note of deep gratitude for your support of the Big Push for Midwives, the campaign to secure regulation and license laws for Certified Professional Midwives (CPMs) in all 50 U.S. States, the District of Columbia, Puerto Rico, Guam, and the Virgin Islands.

https://www.pushformidwives.org/impact

10/17/2021

This article is a MUST READ for midwives, birth activists, health policy people, legislators, regulators — it gets just about everything right!!!

The COVID-19 pandemic has placed unprecedented stress on health care systems across the globe. This stress has altered prenatal, labor, delivery, and …

06/10/2021

"Midwives show decreased cesarean section rates, lower preterm birth rates, higher breast-feeding, higher bonding, just higher any parameter that one would ascribe to having better outcomes, integration of midwives contributes to that.

"There are studies that compare what happens when you have low risk cases dealt with by obstetricians and low risk cases dealt with by midwives, and generally midwives do better.

"It’s part of a system where there’ll be referral of high-risk cases to obstetricians, but great. That’s exactly how it should be. For higher-risk cases you absolutely want to have the highest trained obstetrician possible. But the fact of the matter is, for most women, they don’t need that.

"The challenge in the United States is we've built up this system around obstetrics and systems don't change very easily and without much pain.
..

"If we’re gonna to try to address the problem of racial disparities in outcomes, midwifery is in one sense really prepared to do that because of the nature of the care they provide. On the other hand, midwifery is an overwhelmingly white profession at the moment, and so there's a dire need to diversify the profession itself if it's going to reach those folks who most need it.

"What we’re seeing is that women and families are demanding midwifery care and out-of-hospital birth, but accessing out-of-hospital birth options for families can be hard.
..

"The U.S. has the highest maternal mortality rate among wealthy countries."

https://www.newyorker.com/culture/the-new-yorker-documentary/black-mothers-face-dangerous-health-care-disparities-can-midwives-bridge-the-gap

https://news.yahoo.com/bringing-midwifery-back-black-mothers-160000939.html

In “Bearing the Burden: Black Mothers in America,” stories of neglect and trauma highlight the growing movement to change this country’s approach to birth and perinatal care.

06/10/2021

“This is a powerful story, and, yes, it is rooted in Camilla but it is also a much broader story and it is a story that continues to be relevant,” said Katherine Malone-France, who is the chief preservation officer with the National Trust.

“The fact that Black women are three to four times more likely to die due to complications related to childbirth today makes this an incredibly relevant place and story,” she added.

Georgia, in particular, has grappled with its high rate of maternal mortality in recent years, and access to labor and delivery service remains fraught as hospitals struggle to sustain the costly service.



https://georgiarecorder.com/2021/06/06/camilla-home-where-black-midwife-delivered-6000-babies-endangered/

https://www.gofundme.com/f/georgia-b-williams-nursing-home-restoration

When Beatrice Borders ended her run as a Camilla midwife, she had helped bring into the world as many as 6,000 babies during Jim Crow era.

05/12/2021

Good luck Kentucky Birth Coalition! 🧡

I’m ready to support Kentucky Birth Coalition on May 11, 2021 during KY Gives Day. Learn more about Kentucky Birth Coalition and all the other organizations participating in .

05/12/2021

"I've been trying to prepare and educate women about the above my entire adult life and will continue to do so for as long as I can. But this isn't something one person or one organization can solve. The system needs to change and the work that needs to go into can often feel insurmountable. Even on the most challenging of days, though, I simply try to remember that what might seem like a small step — i.e. having a prenatal consultation with one woman — can actually be a leap toward better health and wellness for all women."

**

Billie Hamilton-Powell shares a first-hand account of maternal health care disparities minorities face in the U.S. and how she's doing her part to help.

05/12/2021

Several of the women interviewed for this article mentioned their desire to be “good patients,” who accommodated the medical teams around them. “I’m too nice to everyone,” said Brittanny Travers, a 34-year-old stay-at-home mother in California who ended up with an unplanned C-section after an exhausting labor. “But now I wish I could’ve been like hell no! This is going to go this way. It’s my life, it’s my body. That doctor is working for me.”

These traumatic outcomes are far worse for Black people, who are at a higher risk of harm in hospitals. “Black maternal health care is in complete crisis,” Noelene Jeffers, head of the National Association to Advance Black Birth told me.

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“It’s upsetting when you’re so out of control of your body, and you say you’re done, and people ignore you and override your choice.”

05/12/2021

“While midwives currently carry these medications with physician orders, it is becoming increasingly difficult for midwives to find physicians willing to write the orders. The ultimate goal is expanding access to high-quality midwifery care at a time when hospitals are closing labor and delivery units and many Texans, especially in rural areas, lack access to maternity care. There are over 100 counties served by midwives but these counties do not have an obstetrician.”

The medicine that midwives would be allowed to use is not extensive, but, Fremgen said, they are crucial.

“The list is very short — anti-hemorrhagic drugs, Vitamin K for newborns, Rhogam for Rh negative women, IV fluids, and lidocaine for local anesthesia in emergencies,” she said.

Research continues to pour in about the benefits of the midwifery model, Fremgen said.

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We salute the passionate consumer base and the Friends of Texas Midwives!!! 🏆 We love and admire these courageous, indomitable grassroots advocates who are joined by the incredible The Association of Texas Midwives and many other sister associations across the state!

Texas has one of the worst rates of maternal mortality in the nation, as well as one of the highest rates of uninsured pregnant women, but Texas midwives are determined to change that.

05/07/2021

https://www.thelily.com/home-birth-requests-went-through-the-roof-when-the-pandemic-hit-are-they-here-to-stay/

Midwives say interest in working with them has doubled — or even tripled — during the pandemic

Midwives say interest in working with them has doubled — or even tripled — during the pandemic.