15/04/2026
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Georgia is threatening to JAIL the very midwives who could save Black women's lives, and now they're fighting back in court. More than a third of Georgia counties are classified as maternity care deserts, no OBs, no birth centers, no hospital obstetric care.
The state's maternal mortality rate sits at 30 deaths per 100,000 births.
And yet, Georgia has made it a criminal offense, punishable by fines and jail tim, for trained, experienced midwives to catch a baby.
In February, Georgia's oldest freestanding birth center shut its doors, leaving just three in the entire state. Meanwhile, the Georgia legislature just let HB520 die, a bill that would have largely decriminalized midwifery, on the final day of the session.
So three midwives took it to court.
Jamarah Amani, one of the plaintiffs, described her own labor at a Georgia hospital as traumatic, she had no autonomy over her own body and recalled being treated "more like a prisoner than a patient."
She labored in the hospital bathroom just to give birth in the position she knew was right for her. She went on to become a licensed midwife, but had to leave Georgia to do it.
Tamara Taitt, who directs the Atlanta Birth Center, is legally barred from providing clinical care to the patients at her own center. Her credential, a Certified Professional Midwife license, recognized in 39 states.
This means nothing in Georgia.
This isn't an accident. A century ago, white progressive reformers deemed Black midwives "unsanitary and superstitious" and pushed for physician oversight and burdensome restrictions. Within two decades, the number of practicing midwives in Georgia collapsed from 9,000 to just 2,000.
The goal was never safety. It was always control over womens bodies.
Black women in Georgia die in childbirth at more than twice the rate of white women.
The WHO says expanding midwifery access could prevent more than 60% of maternal and newborn deaths globally. But Georgia, backed by the AMA's fierce opposition to any expansion of non-physician scope of practice, keeps a trained workforce on the sidelines while women die.
The Center for Reproductive Rights filed suit in Fulton County Superior Court on April 2, joined by two other midwives, seeking to strike down restrictions that advocates call a direct continuation of laws designed to exclude Black providers from birth work.
This is what the war on women's bodies looks like in 2026, not just abortion bans, but criminalizing the community care networks Black women built to survive a system that was never built for them.
These midwives are fighting back. These are the hero’s we need!
