Big Push Letter to the Editor Campaign

Thank you for signing the "I Pushed for Out-Of-Hospital Maternity Care" petition supporting Certified Professional Midwives! You joined nearly 7,000 family members who have signed the petition in just a few short weeks - truly an overwhelming display of support for the skilled, effective, and cost-reducing care that these out-of-hospital maternity care specialists provide.

While the right and the left fight about end-of-life decisions for Grandma, we are worried about the maternity care her granddaughter is receiving. We need to fight to make sure that the needs of mothers and babies are not ignored during the health care debate and that our health care system includes the full range of maternity care providers and settings for all women.

Today, you can take action to raise more public awareness of support for Certified Professional Midwives by joining our letter to the editor campaign. It will take just a couple of minutes and be another "push" for maternity care reform that puts mothers and babies in the forefront of the debate.

Economically, increasing access to Certified Professional Midwives is one of the smartest fixes to the national health care system that we can make. Economist David Anderson calculates that if the rate of births that take place in freestanding birth centers and in private homes increases by less than 10%, we realize an annual savings of more than $9 billion. Plus, along the way, we reduce disparate outcomes among racial and ethnic minorities and provide care at a fraction of the cost of traditional maternity care.

As you may know, Members of Congress are now back home for the month of August, and it is a prime time to make sure that your elected officials know they should support the effort to include CPMs in the list of Medicaid providers in whatever the final form healthcare legislation looks like.

Letters to the editor are powerful tools for not only communicating with the public, but with elected officials as well. They pay very close attention to what is printed in that part of the newspaper and in the online letters forum as well. Please don't set this aside: visit the Letter to the Editor campaign page to find newspapers in your area and use the talking points to quickly personalize and send your letter to the editor.

Each of us may feel very differently about health care reform, but the one thing we can all agree on is that ALL women in our communities deserve access to maternity care specialists who can save the system money AND who have a track record of improving outcomes for pregnant women who are at risk for having their babies too soon and at low birth weights.

Again, thank you for your support! Together, we are creating change and increasing access to Certified Professional Midwives for ALL families throughout the United States!