To all home birth supporters!
This is an extremely urgent message from Collette Bernhard. PLEASE DROP ALL YOUR PLANS AND HEAD TO THE STATE CAPITOL NEXT TUESDAY, MARCH 3, 2009!
I cannot overstate how important this is.
The Home Birth Safety Act (HB 226), which will license Certified Professional Midwives (CPMs) for home birth, is going to be heard in the Health Care Availability Access Committee next Tuesday, March, 3, 2009, at 4pm. This will either be the beginning of a great era or the final chapter in our decades long efforts to pass a CPM licensure law. The next time after this year to introduce a viable bill will be years from now, so we must make our best efforts now.
We have gone down every possible avenue over the past few years, to get as much support as possible, and even reached agreement with our state's nursing groups. We have built a strong coalition with many state groups including Illinois Public Health Association, Illinois Maternal Child Health Coalition, Health and Medicine Policy Research Group, and Health and Disability Advocates, among others. We've even managed to get our bill placed in a better committee. So it all comes down to this: will we make it out the House Health Care Availability Access Committee, or will our bill die?
We have just received word from our people on the ground in Springfield that individual doctors have been traveling to Springfield to lobby against our bill. A lot of them. And they are making an impression. This is unprecedented in Illinois and even across the whole country that large numbers of individual doctors are actually going to the state capitol to lobby against a CPM licensure bill. So please PLEASE if you value home birth and want the option available for your future pregnancies or for your daughters in the years to come, then make it your number one priority to come to Springfield, Illinois next Tuesday, March 3, 2009!
We need EVERYONE to take a vacation day or call in sick, pull your kids out of school, and bring your sister, your best friend and your mother to Springfield that day to pack the hallways and the hearing room! We have to show Illinois legislators that the people of Illinois need access to licensed midwives!
Just a little while ago, the Illinois General Assembly's website posted that our bill, HB 226, the Home Birth Safety Act, has been assigned to a different committee, Healthcare Availability Access. This is a good sign, but we still have an uphill battle.
Please look over the list of the targeted legislators at http://homebirthishealthy.blogspot.com/2009/02/targeted-action-alert.html to see if you or anyone you know lives in these districts. Make sure that you and your family and friends immediately contact their state representative to support HB 226, the Home Birth Safety Act. Then let us know what you hear!
You can contact Colette Bernhard on facebook or via email at birthnews@earthlink.net or Pat Colet at colefam@gmail.com.
The Healthcare AA committee usually meets the first session day of the week in the afternoon, so we will most likely call the bill NEXT TUESDAY, March 3, 2009. Assuming we (along with our sponsors and lobbyist) believe that we are ready, and soon as the General Assembly's website posts the hearing notice, we will pass on the final details of the hearing time.
Please pencil in the date and plan to attend with your QUIET children. Children are very welcome so long as they are quiet, but due to the legal nature of the proceedings, you must be prepared to exit the room immediately if your child starts to make any sound whatsoever. That said, we hope that you will be able to attend to show your support! We will post more details later.
Please forward this message to everyone you know and ask them to do the same!
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See our latest updates at http://homebirthishealthy.blogspot.org !
Colette M. Bernhard
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