Illinois
CPMs: Right Here. Right Now.
"As volunteer leaders in the Illinois movement to license Certified Professional Midwives, we are pleased with the recent Big Push for Midwives Campaign.
"Illinois is in the midst of a home birth maternity care crisis. Licensed home birth practices are found in only 4 of 102 counties. The extreme shortage of qualified providers has created an underground, unregulated and poorly integrated system of maternity care thus placing pregnant women and babies at risk. The movement addressing the needs of these mothers and babies is lead by an all-volunteer grassroots organization, known as the Coalition for Illinois Midwifery. The Board of the Coalition for Illinois Midwifery is dedicated to assuring access to a licensed maternity care provider for each and every woman who chooses to deliver her baby at home.
"In the past year, the Illinois movement has benefited from the activities of the newly formed Big Push Campaign. We have especially benefited from the efforts to coordinate communications. The campaign has brought together a network of state-level leaders across the country. We now participate in daily communications with this network. Even more importantly, Big Push facilitates communications between the network and leadership in the public health community, such as Our Bodies Ourselves (formerly the Boston Women's Health Book Collective) and the American College of Nurse Midwives.
"Furthermore, Illinois leaders are grateful for the coordinated and successful national press campaign of the campaign. The entire country is benefiting from the well-timed news releases rich with scientific evidence. The Big Push for Midwives campaign has done an outstanding job educating the public about the inherent shortcomings of underground maternity care and how licensing home birth midwives based on the Certified Professional Midwife credential is the logical solution to this problem."
—Michelle S. Breen, MHS
Acting President
—Colette Bernhard
Legislative Chair
Coalition for Illinois Midwifery
"Benjamin Franklin once wrote, 'Tell me and I forget, teach me and I remember, involve me and I learn.' This is the very principle, I believe, the Big Push organization is built upon. They have given voice and involvement to all women who are seeking access to midwifery care within their communities.
"Most importantly to women who sit on the margins of society and who don't always have a voice in this struggle for reproductive rights, the Big Push has managed the feat of remaining inclusive, active, and relevant as we collectively push for CPM licensing throughout the nation."
—Lakeesha J. Harris, Illinois
International Center for Traditional Childbirth (ICTC)
State Representative and Reproductive Rights Activist
