HB 226 - Community Update

House Bill 226 – Home Birth Safety Act – April 7th 2010 Update

PROGRESS – WOW!!!

How’s that for the title to our update? At this point the Coalition for Illinois Midwifery is closer than it’s ever been to passage of its midwifery licensure bill, despite being past the usual deadline for doing such things. Over the past two weeks, with a lot of help from all of you, we’ve managed to revive our bill and add FOUR NEW CO-SPONSORS!!

We’ve also managed to identify a committee that may be most favorable and count 6 of the 7 needed “yes” votes to get through that committee. In addition, since we are past the usual deadlines, we’ve needed to count the floor votes ahead of time too. And guess what? Between our “yes” votes and our “likely yeses” we have 47 of the 60 we will need to get passage in the Illinois House of Representatives!! And there are many legislators we still haven’t asked yet. We are confident that with your continued help, we can find the remaining votes.

WE ARE CLOSE – close to finally having the support in the House that we need to get through. Every year we’ve gotten stronger. This year we are on the brink.

Our next plan is a lobby day. Watch for an email in the few days with an invitation to join us in Springfield with M&M cookies (stands for mothers and midwives) in hand. The most likely date for this will be Wednesday, April 14th. Please save the date in your calendar.

In the mean time please keep forwarding our latest action alert to anyone you know who may help.
I’m attaching it to this email. We still do need to reach many legislators – especially those outside of the Chicago metropolitan area.

IF YOU HAVEN’T CALLED YET, PLEASE CALL YOUR REP AND ASK HIM/HER TO CO-SPONSOR THE HOME BIRTH SAFETY ACT – HB226. SEE OUR ACTION ALERT ON www.illinoismidwifery.org FOR MORE INFO.

Please also donate. Lobby Day could be the thing that puts us over the top, but it there will be expenses. Can you donate just $10 dollars today to help make passage of the Home Birth Safety Act a reality?
Please visit http://illinoismidwifery.org and click on paypal or mail a check made out to CFIM (or Coalition for Illinois Midwifery) to:

CFIM c/o Vicki Johnson
6092 Torchlite Trail
Loves, Park, IL 61111

Or if you are a midwife, doula, massage therapist or other provider, please consider donating a small portion of each client fee. Check out Community Counts – Better Birth Initiative at http://communitycountsbetterbirth.wordpress.com/2010/01/


Thank you to all of you who have helped and will help in the future. YOU are the reason we are doing this and YOU are the reason we are succeeding.

Best wishes,
Rachel





Rachel Dolan Wickersham, CD(DONA), LCCE
president, Coalition for Illinois Midwifery
vice president, Illinois Council of Certified Professional Midwives
Jiandra@aol.com
630-750-9444