Bill moves forward, unfortunately...

Unfortunately the midwife amendments bill passed out of the Senate committee and was sent to the Senate floor to be voted on. There was some good that came out of the committee meeting though - in fact it went better than the midwives were expecting. There is an awesome Senator on the committee who asked some great questions about the bill and is completely on our side but his view was unfortunately outvoted 2-3. I was debating on Wednesday night whether or not I would go because I would need to get Blondie & Kitty up early again and I wanted to be out of the door by 6:45 a.m. to be sure that I got there on time and could get a seat. It's also even more work since I'm in my 7th month of pregnancy. Finally right before I went to bed though I made the decision that I needed to make the effort and be there to support my midwife and our cause - plus this doesn't happen every day. I also knew that this bill would be first on the agenda so it would definitely be heard and that I would be able to leave right afterwards and get home earlier than I did on Tuesday.

So I got up Thursday morning at 6 a.m. and while I was getting myself ready DH got up and said that he would stay home and watch the girls for me so that I wouldn't have to haul them along. We had been waffling somewhat on our schedule for Thursday because of the committee meeting at the capitol and then the Family & Church History Department of the church (which DH works for) was having its annual department meeting at 1:30 that afternoon down in Salt Lake that employees & spouses were invited to attend. So since DH works down in Utah county he decided to do some work from home in the morning so that he could watch the girls for me and then we would go together to the department meeting in the afternoon.

Well, I left at 6:45 for the committee meeting and I got there in record time. I was at the Capitol and had found a parking space by 7:20 so I sat in the car for a little while and took some time to write down some thoughts in case I had the opportunity to speak to the committee.

Unfortunately they only let three people speak who opposed the bill and I wasn't one of them. My midwife spoke (who is the head of the LDEM board), our sponsor of the original licensing bill from the House of Representatives, Jackie Biskupski, spoke and then a homebirthing mom spoke. Rep. Biskupski said that she had spoken with the Senate President about this bill and he said that he wanted some results this year so that this issue doesn't keep appearing each year. The legislators are definitely getting sick of seeing our group each year and having to listen to the same issues each year.

The Utah Medical Association (UMA) and LDEMs had a meeting scheduled yesterday afternoon to try and work out their differences and they are in the process of trying to work out a compromise between the two groups. I'm actually somewhat fearful of the concessions that the midwives are going to have to make to appease the UMA.

The committee chair from the meeting said that he would vote to pass the bill out of committee under the assumption that the two groups would meet and hopefully work out any differences and come up with an amendment to the bill that could then be voted on by the Senate.

I'm glad that I went to the committee meeting but I was somewhat frustrated with some of the opinions of the medical community and the committee members (my senator included). There was a rules process set up in statute when the original bill passed 3 years ago and the rules set up have been working. The UMA could have objected to any of the rules that were proposed, but their representative on the rule-making board decided to not show up to any of the meetings.

If anyone wants to listen to the audio file of the committee meeting, click on this link and then pick the date February 7, 2008:
Senate Health & Human Services Committee Meetings