from States Newsroom
|
By Kelcie Moseley-Morris |
“Tying together community care with enhanced maternity care when women need it can be really effective, because then they have a place to go back to after they have their babies that knows them.”
— Gene Declercq, Boston University School of Public Health professor
Sarah Simmons, a midwife and co-owner of Maple Street Birth Center in rural Okanogan County, Wash., holds a newborn. A new report found that 10 states lack birth centers. (Photo courtesy of Sarah Simmons)
Birth centers are an option for those with low-risk pregnancies and are correlated with more positive health outcomes, but 10 states do not have any birth centers at all, and more could be built with certain state policy solutions and different models of care, a new report suggests.
Birth centers can be an attractive option for pregnant patients seeking fewer medical interventions and a more “home-like” childbirth experience that is still attended by professionals. Centers are often chosen by Black, Indigenous and Hispanic patients, who experience negative maternal and infant health outcomes at disproportionately higher rates than white patients, research shows.
The Commonwealth Fund, a nonpartisan, private foundation that supports independent research on healthcare issues, released the report Tuesday. Using data from the federal Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, the American Association of Birth Centers and other state-level data, the report found 10 states — Arkansas, Hawaii, Iowa, Kentucky, Mississippi, Missouri, Nebraska, North Dakota, Rhode Island and Vermont — have zero birth centers.
Eight other states have only one birth center. Conversely, the states with the highest number of centers are California, Florida, Texas, Virginia and Washington.
Birth centers are usually staffed by midwives, and are sometimes subject to tight state regulations such as certain staff requirements and referral relationships with local hospitals. The report shows the number of people choosing birth centers for delivery is still quite small, at about 1%, but the popularity of home births and birth centers surged during the COVID-19 pandemic. About 75% of those using birth centers were non-Hispanic white women, the study data showed, while about 12% were Hispanic and 6.6% were Black.
THE POD
Next on our Stories From The States podcast: Gubernatorial and legislative races to watch
In November’s midterm elections, Democrats could win a majority of governor’s offices for the first time in 16 years.
President Donald Trump’s influence towers over some tight gubernatorial races. In Wisconsin, Republican nominee U.S. Rep. Tom Tiffany backed Trump’s attempt to overturn the 2020 presidential election results. In Georgia, GOP candidate Rick Jackson has said he wanted to be “Trump’s favorite governor.”
Both Tiffany and Jackson have since tried to distance themselves from the president.
Democratic candidates are taking advantage of Republican tension, and hope to see a “blue wave.” Party leaders in some states, like Michigan, are hoping to capture a trifecta: control of the governor’s office and both chambers of the state legislature.
THE BEAT
Hundreds of pregnancy-related prosecutions nationwide since Dobbs decision, report finds
A report found hundreds of pregnancy-related prosecutions in Oklahoma — and more than 900 nationwide — since the constitutional right to abortion was overturned by the U.S. Supreme Court. (Getty Images)
Oklahoma has had at least 222 criminal cases related to women’s pregnancies or births since the 2022 U.S. Supreme Court ruling that allowed the state to end abortion access, according to new data released Tuesday.
Nationwide, there have been over 900 such cases but this number is likely an underrepresentation of pregnancy-related prosecutions, according to the report released by Pregnancy Justice, which works to “defend the rights of pregnant people.”
Of the 23 states reviewed in the report, Oklahoma had the second highest number of pregnancy-related prosecutions, trailing only South Carolina. That state had 381 cases filed.
The organization attributes Oklahoma’s high number of cases to a 2020 Oklahoma Court of Criminal Appeals ruling that found a fetus was protected as a child under the state’s child neglect statute.
Wendy Bach, a law professor at University of Tennessee in Knoxville and one of the co-principal investigators for the report, said Oklahoma is 1 of 3 states where a court has set this precedent. The other states are South Carolina and Alabama, she said.
THE PULSE
MO: Missouri’s Amendment 3 would allow some abortions. Whether women could get them is unclear. | Missouri Independent
ID: When Idaho banned abortion, OB-GYNs fled. The doctors who stayed are cracking. | The New York Times
ABORTION ACCESS IN THE U.S.
Track state-level developments on reproductive rights anytime at News From The States. Send tips and thoughts to ✉️ [email protected], , and follow her on Bluesky @kelciemmorris.bsky.social.
And if you enjoyed today's edition, forward this email to a friend.