Constitutional challenge to Georgia’s midwifery restrictions

Georgia maintains some of the most restrictive midwifery laws in the country. It prohibits direct-entry midwives, those trained outside the nursing profession who specialize in out-of-hospital birth, from practicing at all. It bars certified nurse-midwives from practicing independently by requiring a formal written agreement with a physician, an arrangement that often means paying a physician hundreds of dollars a month.

With the Center for Reproductive Rights and Covington & Burling LLP, the firm filed suit in the Superior Court of Fulton County on behalf of three experienced midwives, Jamarah Amani, Tamara Taitt and Sarah Stokely. The complaint sets out the evidence that midwifery care is safe and effective for low-risk pregnancies and associated with fewer unnecessary interventions, and it places Georgia’s restrictions in their history: a campaign, over generations, that pushed midwives, including the Black midwives who were central to birth across the South, out of practice. Those restrictions persist while Georgia carries one of the highest maternal mortality rates in the United States and a shortage of maternity care providers, particularly in rural areas.

The suit asks the court to hold that the restrictions violate the Georgia Constitution’s guarantee of the right to pursue one’s chosen profession, its equal protection clause, and its limits on delegating governmental power to private actors, and to restore lawful pathways for midwives to practice. The case is pending.