All Canadian women deserve equal access to midwifery services 

May 3, 2013

Midwives offically became a regulated profession in Alberta on Jan. 1 with the establishment of their own professional college.

A change to provincial legislation last month allowed for the creation of the College of Midwives of Alberta.

Alberta began covering the cost of midwifery services in 2009. There are now 70 registered midwives in the province.

Click on the link above to see a report by the CBC’s Marion Warnica.

“This is an important milestone for Alberta Midwives in delivering midwifery care for Albertan moms and babies” says the President of the Alberta Association of Midwives, JoanMargaret Laine, “Establishing the College will allow for planned and continued growth of midwifery in our province.”

“I’m pleased to support the College in this step towards becoming a fully self-governing profession, said Fred Horne, Minister of Health. “Self-governance demonstrates to Albertans that midwives are skilled professionals and are maintaining high standards of practice. It marks the coming of age both for the profession and for the province, a recognition that midwives are very much a part of the medical mainstream in Alberta.”

Diane Rach has been elected as the new President of the College and she is excited about the CMA’s mandate for regulating the practice of the profession in the province and for providing an avenue for responding to feedback from the public regarding midwifery practice. Rach said, “As Midwifery grows in the province forming a College is a significant step for us as a maturing profession. I would like to express my thanks to the Minister and the team at Alberta Health for supporting us with this amendment.”

There are over 70 practicing Registered Midwives in Alberta today. Putting their practice under the umbrella of the CMA is essential to ensure that Alberta continues to have the best maternity care. The CMA will promote a model of care for the profession that encourages informed choice for the client and participation of women by providing standards and guidelines for the midwives that ensure quality of care and protection of the public.

Alberta Midwives are regulated by the Alberta government and publicly funded. There are over 70 midwives registered in Alberta. Their services are covered for all residents of Alberta and no referral is required.

For more information:
Alex Andrews
Executive Director

execdir.aam@gmail.com

(403) 214-1882

Photograph by: Shaughn Butts, Edmonton Journal

Only a handful of midwives practised in Alberta 20 years ago, some doing home births. They were registered but working without medicare funding.

Today there are more than 70 working in the province, including about 25 in the Edmonton area, which is a large enough group to set up a college with its own disciplinary procedures, Health Minister Fred Horne said.

“I really congratulate them, this is an important step,” he said. “Midwives are part of the team and today’s medicine is all about working in teams.”

Joanna Greenhalgh, spokeswoman for the Alberta Association of Midwives, said the group is very pleased with the emergence of the college. She characterized it as a sign of the importance of midwifery and the profession’s commitment to public safety and standards.

In 2009, midwifery services were funded by provincial medicare and given full hospital access. The move was important to allow midwives to offer birthing services in a variety of sites, she said.

It’s also important “to establish good (relations) with doctors and nurses,” she said.

Midwives deliver about two per cent of the babies in Alberta, the association said. About 50 per cent of those births attended by midwives occur in hospitals.

Due to the large size of medical practices today, women cannot always be sure their own doctor will be able to attend a birth, Greenhalgh said.

That makes a midwife a more attractive option. They practise with only one other partner on each expectant mother, and college regulations will limit the profession to teams of four who can “ share care” to ensure women they will know their midwife.

Mount Royal University in Calgary offers a four-year bachelor’s degree in midwifery.

The new college body will continue to have oversight from the Health Disciplines Board for a period of time before full independence.

Seven provinces and two territories offer publicly funded midwifery, including B.C., Alberta, Saskatchewan, Manitoba, Ontario, Quebec, Nunavut, Nova Scotia, and the Northwest Territories.

In 2012, the province authorized an independent college for naturopaths, though it did not agree to fund treatment.

By Sheila Pratt, Edmonton Journal

spratt@edmontonjournal.com

Freedom For Birth is a 60 minute campaigning documentary featuring a Who’s Who of leading birth experts and international Human Rights lawyers all calling for radical change to the world’s maternity systems.

Hermine Hayes-Klein, US lawyer and organiser of the recent Human Rights in Childbirth Conference at the Hague, the Netherlands says, “the way that childbirth is being managed in many countries around the world is deeply problematic. Millions of pregnant women are pushed into hospitals, pushed onto their back and cut open. They are subject to unnecessary pharmaceutical and surgical interventions that their care providers openly admit to imposing on them for reasons of finance and convenience. Women around the world are waking up to the fact that childbirth doesn’t have to be like this and it shouldn’t. Disrespect and abuse are not the necessary price of safety”.

Made by British filmmakers Toni Harman and Alex Wakeford, Freedom For Birth film tells the story of an Hungarian midwife Agnes Gereb (Geh-rib) who has been jailed for supporting women giving birth at home. One of the home birth mothers supported by Ms. Gereb decided to take a stand.

When pregnant with her second child, Anna Ternovsky took her country to the European Court of Human Rights and won a landmark case that has major implications for childbirth around the world.

Toni Harman, one of the filmmakers says, “the Ternovsky vs Hungary ruling at the European Court of Human Rights in 2010 means that now in Europe, every birthing woman has the legal right to decide where and how she gives birth. And across the world, it means that if a woman feels like her Human Rights are being violated because her birth choices are not being fully supported, she could use the power of the law to protect those rights. With the release of Freedom For Birth, we hope millions of women become aware of their legal rights and so our film has the potential to spark a revolution in maternity care across the world. In fact, we are calling this the Mothers’ Revolution.”

Cathy Warwick, Chief Executive of the Royal College of Midwives (RCM), says: “A safe childbirth should be a fundamental human right for women. Sadly, for many, many millions of women and their babies across the world this is not the case. The world is desperately short of the people who can help to ensure and deliver this human right; midwives. I hope that the making of this film which the RCM is supporting with a screening will go a long way to help make skilled maternity care a reality for those women who currently do not have access to it.”

Lesley Page, President of the Royal College of Midwives adds, “Too many women across the world are dying or suffering terribly because of a lack of skilled maternity care. This is unacceptable and I call on all Governments across the world to give women the right and access to safe care in pregnancy and childbirth.”

Ms. Hayes-Klein concludes, Freedom For Birth holds the answer to changing the system. Birth will change when women realise they have a right to meaningful support for childbirth and claim that right. Birth will change when women stand up against the abuses that are currently suffered in such high numbers and say, No More.”

A local screening of Freedom For Birth will take place at The Plaza Theatre, in Calgary Alberta at 6:30 PM on September 20, 2012, hosted by midwifery students of Mount Royal University. Tickets are $10, available at the door. Advanced tickets available by visiting www.brownpapertickets.com and searching “freedom for birth”. All profits from the screening go to support student midwives in funding travel costs associated with upcoming international placements due to take place in the spring of 2013.

Additional Notes

Additional information about Freedom For Birth can be found on the website:
http://freedomforbirth.com

The filmmakers are aiming for 1,000 screenings happening all across the world on Thursday 20th September, 2012. The countries with confirmed screenings include the UK, Germany, France, Denmark, Spain, Greece, Italy, Norway, the Netherlands, Austria, Poland, Croatia, Slovenia, Slovakia, Belgium, Hungary, USA, Canada, Mexico, Australia and New Zealand.

Each screening is being organised by local birth campaigners.

The film has been selected for screening in the Cambridge Film Festival on 20th September. http://www.cambridgefilmfestival.org.uk/

Toni Harman and Alex Wakeford are a filmmaking couple who have set up a cross-media global film project called One World Birth to provide educational videos featuring the world’s leading birth experts http://oneworldbirth.net

Freedom For Birth is Harman and Wakeford’s third documentary film about birth. They were inspired to make films about following their own difficult birth of their daughter four years ago. A cascade of interventions in their birth led to an emergency caesarean section.

Contact Information:

Local event host:
Jessica Swain (Mount Royal University midwifery student)
403.988.9813
Jessica.m.swain@gmail.com

Toni Harman, Producer/Director, Freedom For Birth
info@altofilms.com +44 (0) 1273 747837 Website: http://freedomforbirth.com
High resolution still images available on request.

Alberta began funding midwifery services in 2009 and their popularity has been soaring ever since.  Now, Mount Royal University is offering a four-year Bachelor degree in midwifery – the first such program in the province.

Will the training and registering of more midwives help ease the strain of Alberta’s baby boom?  Do they offer a safe birthing option, and is the health care community ready to accept them?

New Training Program for Midwives in Alberta

On April 14, the Alberta Court of Queen’s Bench issued a court order against Gerilinde Lehner. The order specifically prohibits Lehner from managing labour or delivering a baby; performing any service set out in section 8 of the Midwifery Regulation; and from describing herself as a midwife or using any name, title, description or abbreviation so as to express or imply that she is a registered midwife or someone who may perform midwifery services.

Lehner does not hold a license in Alberta as a registered midwife.

In Alberta, managing labour or delivering a baby is a restricted activity under Schedule 7.1 of the Government Organization Act and only those persons authorized by legislation may perform this activity. The only persons in Alberta currently authorized to manage labour or deliver a baby are regulated members of the following professions: physicians, registered midwives, registered nurses, and paramedics in emergency situations.

Managing labour and delivering a baby is designated a restricted activity because it carries with it a risk of harm. As a result, it is an activity that can only be performed by qualified and authorized health practitioners.

Anyone wishing to have a midwife attended birth is encouraged to go to the Alberta Health and Wellness website for a list of currently registered midwives and call the Registrar for Midwives in Alberta to confirm the currency of an individual midwife’s registration. A list of currently registered midwives can be found at www.health.alberta.ca/services/midwifery.html and the Registrar for Midwives can be reached at 780-422-2733.

Court Order