Oppose AB 179 – Unelected Bureaucrats Try to Solve Maternal and Infant Morbidity and Mortality and Exempt Themselves from Open Meeting Laws
Hearing in Assembly Health and Human Services Committee Mar 08, 2023, 1:30 PM
Carson City: Room 3138 of the Legislative Building; Las Vegas: Video-conferenced to Room 4406 of the Grant Sawyer State Office Building, 555 E. Washington Ave., Las Vegas, NV.
Submit your opinion to the Legislature at the bottom of the page. You must have a NELIS account to do this. It is easy to set up. https://www.leg.state.nv.us/App/NELIS/REL/82nd2023/Bill/9872/Opinions
Submit written Testimony: testimony must be submitted via email in PDF format by Tuesday March 7 (tomorrow) at 1pm to AsmHHS@asm.state.nv.us . Draft your letter and save it to a pdf. Make sure you include your name and your city or county of residence IN THE PDF LETTER and then email it to the address above.
Explanation AB 179: This bill’s purpose is to Establish the Perinatal Quality Control Collaborative, a board filled with bureaucrats who will hold meetings in private, to which the public cannot attend and will be charged with trying to reduce infant mortality and other poor birth outcomes. The collaborative would also be in charge of figuring out why women in ethnic and racial minorities have worse birth outcomes and how to make perinatal care less expensive.
We oppose this bill for the following reasons:
- The Collaborative is redundant because we already have two boards to address the issue of infant and maternal mortality. The Maternal & Child Health Advisory Board and a Maternal Mortality Review Committee.
- This Collaborative will meet in private without the public being able to view their proceedings or give comment even though their travel and per diem will be provided by public funds.
- The Collaborative is predominately filled with “experts” who are representatives of other organizations, and it is skewed to prefer the highly technocratic and medicalized approach to prenatal care, childbirth, and child health care because it only includes one midwife, and even that midwife is appointed by the Director of the Collaborative and must be a certified Professional Midwife or Certified Nurse-Midwife thus eliminating adequate representation from practitioners who have a holistic view of childbirth.
- This bill lays the rails for greater government regulation of prenatal care and childbirth. Rural Nevadans stand to lose the most because they tend to choose midwifery services that are more holistic in their approach to prenatal care and childbirth.
- This bill authorizes the Collaborative to access data that isn’t any of their business. It could lead to the state requiring even more private health data from Nevadans.
- The Collaborative doesn’t have any mothers represented. Birth is not a collaborative event, it is a private one, so the input and experience of actual mothers in Nevada is crucial. Experts are not in charge of the birth experience of women in Nevada.
- The people on this Collaborative are already responsible for work on prenatal care and childbirth, so they can continue that work within their own organizations. The public can choose what sources they look to for guidance on prenatal and childbirth choices. This collaborative is redundant.
- Measures that lead to best outcomes for mother and child prenatally and in childbirth are not likely to come from groups who are driven and funded by pharmaceutical companies, obstetrics, and for-profit medical model of healthcare. There is too much conflict of interest with medicalized birth which can actually endanger babies and mothers.
- Ultimately, the mother is the only one responsible for her own prenatal care and is the most important stakeholder when it comes to her health and the health of her babies.
The information needed to achieve the goals of improved outcomes for mothers and babies is widely available. Some measures that are proven to improve prenatal and childbirth outcomes include:
- Educating yourself. Rebecca Decker, PhD has created https://evidencebasedbirth.com which puts prenatal care research and child birth research into the hands of mothers so they can make better choices.
- Using a doula. Increase personal advocacy for mothers. The presence of doulas reduces cesareans by 50%, 40% reduction in need for Pitocin, 25% reduction in birthing time, 30% reduction in request for pain medication, 60% reduction in the request for epidural, 30% reduction in forceps. deliveries.Mothering the Mother by Marshall H. Klaus, MD
- Eating the Brewer Diet. Reduces women’s risk for pre-eclampsia during pregnancy by encouraging a nutritious, whole-food, high-protein diet. http://www.drbrewerpregnancydiet.com
- Helping the baby get into ideal position in the womb. Spinning babies offers information on how to help improve baby’s position within to womb which lowers risk of cesarean sections. https://www.spinningbabies.com
- Choosing to give birth in a place where you psychologically feel safe and where you trust your intuition and choose only care providers you trust to support you.
“When women are in charge of their environment, when they have the privacy to labor undisturbed, when they feel completely at ease and supported, outcomes are always superior.” Heart and Hand: A Midwife’s Guide to Pregnancy and Birth by Elizabeth Davis. Davis further explains the three models of childbirth: Technocratic, Humanistic, Holistic. Everyone on the proposed Collaborative comes from the Technocratic model of care for prenatal and childbirth.