Since our last newsletter the Independent Midwifery Practice Act has gone through a lot of changes. Representative Roger Hunt is currently working on revisions that he will submit to the Legislative Research Council. When this draft comes back we still may have some changes to make before our bill is ready to submit to the legislature. Much research, time and collaboration has gone into the drafting of this bill. Please pray that in the end, we will come up with a bill that will provide the midwives our South Dakota home birth families so desperately need and that this bill will be passed into law.

We plan to publish a copy of our bill on the website when we get a final draft ready for the legislature. This may not happen until right before it is introduced, so please don't wait to see the bill before you contact your legislators and educate them on the need for midwives to attend home births in South Dakota. Explain that this bill is very different from the midwifery registration bills we have tried in the past. Our bill would license only highly trained, nationally certified midwives with state oversight in the form of a midwifery board which
would make rules and regulations.

As soon as our bill receives a bill number (which won’t be until it is introduced sometime after January 9th) we will post the information on the chat group. District Contacts please set up a phone tree in your district to inform those who
are not on the chat group. This will be crucial during the legislative session.