Texans for Midwifery

04/24/2025

"At the time, the Jackson family’s pediatrician reported the parents to child protective services in Texas, questioning their ability to properly care for Mila’s serious jaundice level using their midwife instead of going to a hospital." - The 19th* News reports

The legal complaint, filed Tuesday by the Jackson family alongside the ACLU, focuses on how the family was treated after their baby, Mila, was returned from foster care.

09/19/2024

https://www.houstonchronicle.com/health/article/midwives-texas-support-birth-outcomes-19725532.php

The loss of the midwifery program at Texas Children's Hospital is emblematic of the lack of support for the profession in Texas, advocates say.

07/09/2024

The Texans for Midwifery website was hacked, so I'm giving up the site, and will be using social media to post.

05/09/2024

The Mamas First Act, introduced by Sen. Elizabeth Warren and Rep. Gwen Moore, would make the pregnancy and postpartum services from doulas and midwives reimbursable in an effort to improve access to care.

05/01/2023

https://19thnews.org/2023/04/texas-newborn-mila-jackson-parents-reunite-foster-care/

Child Protective Services removed Mila Jackson from her home and placed her in foster care for 23 days after her parents chose their midwife’s care over a hospital.

04/18/2023

"A custody case currently unfolding in Texas has separated a newborn from her parents and highlighted two systemic realities in the United States: the policing of Black families by child welfare systems and the disregard of midwifery expertise by many doctors."

The case of Mila Jackson highlights the disregard of midwives’ expertise and the disproportionate impact of child welfare systems on Black families.

03/30/2023

"Ways where you will be less stressed during and feel safer during the birth can make a difference. But at this point we don't have enough midwives or doulas or maternity-care providers at all. We have about one maternity-care provider per 15,000 births, and that's not spread evenly over the country. ... So we also have to do things that get more people trained, and trained not just as OB-GYNs but as midwives and doulas."

Public health professor Arline Geronimus explains how marginalized people suffer nearly constant stress, which damages their bodies at the cellular level. Her new book is Weathering.

01/05/2023

Another reason why access to out-of-hospital birth and midwifery care is so important in Texas!

Women in Deep East Texas drive over an hour to give birth after the last obstetrics unit in the area closed in 2019. But if closing the unit was hard, reopening it is proving nearly impossible.