CHARLOTTE -- Two women charged with helping a deliver baby without a license at a private home are waiting to see if medical examiners determine they contributed to the child’s death.
The death fuels a debate over whether North Carolina should promote or discourage access to midwives who deliver babies at home, The Charlotte Observer reported Friday. North Carolina is one of a handful of states that requires midwives to be licensed nurses.
One of the women charged, 45-year-old Jackie Proffit of Indian Trail, calls the arrests “a witch hunt.”
The delivery took place Dec. 16 in Charlotte. The police report says the 29-year-old mother called to report that “they performed a water birthing at home and suffered a birthing complication.”
A week after the delivery, Proffit and 43-year-old Mary Barhite of Charlotte, were arrested on charges of unlawful practice of midwifery. Police and the district attorney’s office are waiting for the medical examiner to report on the cause of the baby’s death, which could determine whether further charges are filed.
Proffit, a licensed massage therapist, said she has never represented herself as a midwife and said she attended the birth to help the mother with back pain during labor. The mother was in a tub only to help with the back pain and was not in the water when she gave birth, said Proffit, who declined to give a detailed description of what happened.
Barhite declined to comment to the newspaper on advice of her attorney, according to someone who answered her phone. A message left by The Associated Press at a home listing for her wasn’t immediately returned.
Dr. Amy Tuteur, a Boston obstetrician who writes a blog opposing home births, said the Charlotte baby’s death is the fourth home-birth fatality in North Carolina in 2011 that she’s been able to verify. North Carolina should resist a push to license non-nurses as midwives because they are unprepared to save babies when complications occur, and no one is held accountable when they fail, she said.
The North Carolina Medical Society, which represents physicians, opposes non-nurse midwives because it says there are concerns about patient safety and the need for supervision.
But proponents of at-home births say avoiding hospitals in low-risk pregnancies protects mothers and babies from excessive medical intervention, including C-sections, induced labor and medication.
Only about half a dozen of the state’s roughly 300 licensed midwives will deliver babies outside of hospitals, said Brooke Atkinson of the North Carolina Friends of Midwives.
Legislation that would liberalize midwife licensing rules was introduced in North Carolina’s General Assembly this year and prompted marches by mothers in favor of the bill and lobbying by proponents. One rally came after a prominent non-nurse midwife who helped deliver hundreds of babies over three decades was charged with helping prepare a Rowan County woman for birth.
Twenty-seven states license and regulate non-nurses, called certified professional midwives, including Virginia, Tennessee and South Carolina.
Parents and health officials can’t be sure about a midwife’s qualifications without a licensing law, said Leigh Fransen, one of four licensed CPMs at the Carolina Community Maternity Center in Fort Mill, S.C.
“When you have midwives operating outside the law, we just have no way of knowing. Did they have the proper equipment? Did they feel that if they called for help, they would get in trouble?” she said. “If I need to take someone to the hospital, I can walk in there with my head held high because I’m legal.”
Three-quarters of the Fort Mill center’s patients come from North Carolina, Fransen said.
The lack of state licensing creates “an underground situation” where mothers wanting home births must rely on word-of-mouth, said Atkinson, of Locust. People are reluctant to openly share information about women who violate the law to do such deliveries, she said.
“It’s very important to me to protect these women who put their lives on the line to serve other women,” said Atkinson, who has had two babies at home and is planning a third home delivery.
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Information from: The Charlotte Observer, http://www.charlotteobserver.com
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