Late night session...

Yesterday was the last day of the legislative session and they work up until midnight. Unfortunately, we had to wait up until almost midnight to find out if the midwife amendments bill would pass or not. I was watching a video feed on my computer almost all day long and the bill kept moving up to the top of the list and then the House would move some other bills up ahead of it. This happened numerous times and finally at around 11:30 p.m. they got to the bill. There wasn't really any debate on it, just a couple of representatives got up and stated that this was truly a compromise bill between the UMA and the midwives group and that both groups agreed to not pursue anymore legislation on this issue until the end of the statistics reporting period in 2011. They had to vote on a couple of minor amendments and then the voting was almost unanimous to pass the bill.

Then the bill had to go back to the Senate for them to decide if they would accept the new substitute and changes that were made while it was in the House. Once the Senate received the bill, the whole voting process was over in less than 5 minutes. Senator Dayton just stood up and asked that everyone vote to concur with the House changes and then they voted - she didn't even state what the differences were from when they voted on it originally a couple of weeks ago. The bill passed both houses just barely before the midnight deadline.

I'm not quite sure how I feel about the bill passing. While the midwives won the majority of issues that they were fighting to preserve, there were a couple of issues that were lost which means fewer choices for women in the state. The two big issues that were lost were breech births & twin births. Now while I am not sure if I would want to have my baby/ies at home if I fell into either of these 2 categories, I know many women who would still like to do so. I know several midwives that deliver twins at home and are very competent at what they do. The sad fact is that both of these cases are almost a guaranteed C-section today in the hospital which is why some women would choose homebirth over the hospital. Women that fall into either of these 2 categories can still choose homebirth with an unlicensed midwife, but unlicensed midwives cannot legally carry things like pitocin for hemorrhaging or oxygen for resuscitating. I do like the fact though that the UMA has agreed to leave the issue alone until 2011 (we'll see if they keep their word) and that we did win VBAC homebirths if the woman signs a waiver. Overall I think that it was a great bill and I really can't see the UMA ever agreeing to a bill that allows breech or twin homebirths. I really wish they would allow a waiver though instead of making it a mandatory transfer so the woman still has the ability to choose for herself.