HUNTSVILLE, Ala. — When Brianna Barker spots the big blue “Tennessee welcomes you” sign about an hour into her car trip, she breathes a little easier. Barker crosses the state line from Alabama to Tennessee every time she goes for a prenatal appointment.
It’s the same welcome sign she’ll see in about a month, when she makes the now-familiar two-and-a-half hour journey while in labor.
More than 30 states allow certified professional midwives to deliver babies, but Alabama is not one of them.
For Barker, that isn’t acceptable.
For Alabama women like her who have low-risk pregnancies and don’t want to give birth in a hospital with a doctor, or at home unassisted, there’s one other option: cross the state line into Tennessee, Georgia, Mississippi or Florida where it’s legal.
Those states have options: in-hospital births attended by midwives; freestanding birth centers staffed with midwives or nurse-midwives; and home births attended by midwives.
“We have women in Alabama who give birth unassisted because they may not have the means to go elsewhere, and for them, that may be a choice they feel backed into,” said Barker, who traveled to a midwife in Tennessee the last time she gave birth. “That is not what we want. We want people to make educated and informed decisions for their family.”
The number of American women choosing midwife-attended births is small, but growing.
Certified midwives and Certified Nurse-Midwives (CNMs) attended 8.4 percent of births in 2014, an 11 percent increase from 2005, according to data from the National Center for Vital Statistics. The vast majority (94 percent) of those births occurred in hospitals. Just 2.7 percent were home births.
