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Mississippi midwives push for licensure: ‘If we don’t do something now, it’s going to get done for us’

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mississippitoday.org – Sophia Paffenroth – 2025-02-04 16:14:00

State Sen. Brice Wiggins, R-Pascagoula, speaks with midwives Savanna Boyd, from left, Tanya Smith-Johnson, and Kashuna Watts at the Capitol in Jackson, Miss., Friday, Jan. 30, 2025. The midwives are advocating for legislation to create a midwifery training program, establish regulations for the profession, and secure insurance coverage for licensed midwifery services. Credit: Eric Shelton/Mississippi Today

A group of Mississippi midwives is again advocating for regulations around their profession – a move they say will actually make it easier for midwives to practice in the state in the long run. 

Under proposed legislation, midwives who want to practice in Mississippi would need to attain licensure from a board, and in turn would gain multiple privileges. As it stands, Mississippi is one of 13 states that has no regulations around professional midwifery – a freedom that hasn’t benefited midwives or mothers, advocates say. 

“Tattoo artists have to apply for a license within our state, but yet someone who’s actually delivering a life and taking care of a mom, prenatal and postnatal – there’s no oversight,” said Rep. Dana McLean, R-Columbus, author of the bill. McLean has proposed similar legislation over the past few years

This is the first year the legislation made it to a full floor vote. The bill specifically addresses professional midwifery – not nurse midwifery, which requires more extensive medical training. 

House Medicaid Chair Missy McGee, R-Hattiesburg, proposed an amendment that would make it unlawful for licensed midwives to do homebirths for breech babies, but withdrew her amendment after other committee members voiced opposition to it. McLean said part of the purpose of the bill is to give women the opportunity to choose to give birth how they feel safest, and it would be the board’s responsibility to determine scope of practice. 

Proponents of House Bill 927 say it builds value around midwives, protects mothers and babies, and strengthens the respect and collaboration between midwives and physicians. 

“Consumers should be able to birth wherever they want and with whom they want – but they should know who is a midwife and who isn’t,” explained Tanya Smith-Johnson, president of the National College of Midwifery. “… Right now the way the law is, technically my husband could say ‘I’m a midwife,’ and there’s no one to say that you’re not.”

The lack of licensure, despite seeming inclusive, has rendered midwifery services inaccessible to poor women – and has also run some midwives out of business, Smith-Johnson explained. 

Without licensure, insurance companies won’t cover midwifery services. Mississippi mothers have to pay out of pocket for the services and midwives end up undervaluing themselves to stay competitive in a market that doesn’t recognize them as licensed professionals. 

“It’s hard for a midwife to be sustainable here,” Smith-Johnson said. “ … What is the standard of how much midwifery can cost if anyone and everyone can say they’re a midwife?”

The absence of licensure has also meant that midwives don’t get access to things like labor medication that those certified in states with licensure can access. 

“It means that you’re kind of working just rogue … not being able to fully take care of a client, where you can order labs, carry oxygen, have medications a midwife would use for someone who is in labor – all of those things,” she said.

Smith-Johnson is part of Better Birth, a group that has been pushing for this legislation for five years. The group formed in response to an infant death that involved a midwife making questionable choices. The mother involved didn’t want to press charges – she just wanted reform. 

“We formed because the mom had two options,” explained Erin Raftery, president of Better Birth. “She could either sue the midwife … but if she did that then it’s almost a guarantee that the profession would either be heavily restricted or outlawed, which is not what that mama wanted … So the other option her attorney gave her was to push for licensure.”

Anyone who practiced midwifery without a license under the bill would be fined $1,000.

In a state riddled with maternity care deserts, the last thing mothers want to see is birth workers leaving the state. But with no clear pathway to becoming a professional midwife, some birth workers are doing just that. 

When Amanda Smith, originally from Jackson, was looking for a midwife to attend the births of her last three children, she and her husband couldn’t find a midwife with whom they felt comfortable working. Smith later discovered her calling for birth work while she was supporting her sister through labor, and she ended up getting her professional midwifery license in Colorado. 

She returned to Mississippi in 2022 to serve her home state and now practices in Hattiesburg. However, she imagines there are midwives like her who leave the state and don’t come back – in no small part because of the liability risk that lack of licensure poses. While Smith has a Colorado midwifery license, she can’t become licensed in Mississippi because it doesn’t exist. 

“It was one thing that really worried me about moving back,” Smith said. “I hired a lawyer to do a consultation and help me look over my paperwork and talk me through any scenario where I could potentially go to jail for being a midwife in Mississippi … I really look at this (bill) as a protection for midwives.”

If the bill becomes law, the board – comprised of nine members, including six midwives and the state health officer – will get to choose the kind of training midwives must undergo in order to attain a license. 

In Texas, licensed midwives must complete a minimum of 1,350 hours of supervised clinical experience and pass an examination with NARM, the North American Registry of Midwives. 

The bill seems to have more traction this year than it has in years past. Midwives say that in part, that’s due to a growing realization that they have the opportunity to regulate their profession as they see fit – before one too many risky situations causes physicians to impose regulations that don’t have midwives’ best interests in mind. 

“I think there’s just been more iffy situations happening in the state, and it’s caused the midwives to realize that if we don’t do something now, it’s going to get done for us,” said Raftery.

The bill now advances to a full floor vote in the House. 

This article first appeared on Mississippi Today and is republished here under a Creative Commons license.

Mississippi Today

Marshand Crisler heading to federal prison for 2 ½ years

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mississippitoday.org – Mina Corpuz – 2025-02-11 13:48:00

Former Hinds County interim sheriff Marshand Crisler has been sentenced to 2 ½ years in federal prison for soliciting and accepting bribes during his unsuccessful 2021 campaign.

U.S. District Court Judge Tom Lee sentenced him Tuesday for the two counts he was convicted of in November. Crisler received concurrent sentences of 30 months in custody of the Bureau of Prisons, followed by three years of supervision and an order to pay a $15,000 fine, according to court records. 

Crisler faced up to 10 years in prison. He remained out on bond until his sentencing. 

The court recommended Crisler to be assigned to the nearest facility to Jackson. Nearby federal facilities are in Yazoo City, Aliceville, Alabama, central Louisiana and Memphis.  

Crisler was charged with soliciting and accepting $9,500 worth of bribes during his 2021 campaign for Hinds County sheriff in exchange for favors from a man with previous felony convictions and giving ammunition the man can’t possess as a felon. 

The jury heard from several witnesses, including Crisler himself and Tonarri Moore, the man with past felonies and pending state and federal charges who the FBI recruited as an informant. 

Parts of recorded conversations between the men, which Moore made for investigators, were played in court.

During several meetings in Jackson and around Hinds County in 2021, Crisler said he would tell Moore about investigations involving him, move Moore’s cousin to a safer part of the Hinds County jail, give him a job with the sheriff’s office and give him freedom to have a gun despite prohibitions on Moore having one. 

Crisler was found guilty after a three-day trial in Jackson. The jury took about two hours to reach a unanimous verdict for both charges .

In November after the verdict, his attorney, John Colette, told reporters his client and family were disappointed in the decision and Crisler planned to appeal. 

Crisler was indicted in April 2023 – the same year he ran again for Hinds County sheriff. He lost in a runoff election to Tyree Jones, the incumbent Crisler faced two years earlier. 

This article first appeared on Mississippi Today and is republished here under a Creative Commons license.

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Mississippi Today

Court-ordered redistricting will require do-over legislative elections this year

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mississippitoday.org – Taylor Vance – 2025-02-11 11:23:00

Five House seats will be re-decided in a November special election, pending court approval, under a resolution the House approved to comply with a federal court order.

Even though voters just elected members of the Legislature in 2023, the races will be held again because a three-judge federal panel determined last year that the Legislature did not create enough Black-majority districts when it redrew its districts.

 The panel ordered the state to redraw the districts and create a new majority-Black district in north Mississippi’s Chickasaw County. 

House Elections Chairman Noah Sanford, R-Collins, told House members he believes the new map complies with the federal Voting Rights Act and will allow Black voters in Chickasaw County to elect a candidate of their choice. 

“I tried to keep the number of members affected minimal,” Sanford said. 

The House plan does not require incumbent legislators to run against each other. The main change in the new map is that it makes the District 22 seat in Chickasaw County, currently held by Republican Rep. Jon Lancaster of Houston, who is white and a majority-Black voter district. 

The other four House districts that lawmakers voted to redraw are: 

  • House District 16: Rep. Rickey Thompson, D-Shannon
  • House District 36: Karl Gibbs, D-West Point
  • House District 39: Dana McLean, R-Columbus
  • House District 41: Kabir Karriem, D-Columbus 

Lancaster told Mississippi Today he did not want to comment on the proposed maps since the litigation over the legislative districts was still pending, and he did not know if he would run in a November special election. 

Under the legislation, the qualifying period will run from May 19 to May 30. The primary election will be held on August 5, with a potential primary runoff on September 2 and the general election on November 4. 

The federal courts also ruled that the Senate must redraw its districts to create a new Black-majority district in the DeSoto County and Hattiesburg areas. 

Senate Rules Chairman Dean Kirby, R-Pearl, has introduced a measure to change some Senate districts. However, he told Mississippi Today he is still tweaking the plan and does not know when the Rules Committee will debate it. 

Once the Legislature passes a redistricting plan, it must go back before the federal courts for approval.

This article first appeared on Mississippi Today and is republished here under a Creative Commons license.

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Mississippi Today

On this day in 1644

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mississippitoday.org – Jerry Mitchell – 2025-02-11 07:00:00

Feb. 11, 1644

New Amsterdam depicted in a cartoon, circa 1642 Credit: Public Domain

The first known legal protest by those of African descent in what became the United States took place when 11 Black Americans petitioned the Council for New Netherland (New York) for freedom, saying they had fulfilled their contracts to the Dutch West India Co. 

They had been brought to the colony just a few years after its 1624 founding. They won their fight, but they remained in legal limbo in what became known as “half-freedom.” They received property, but they still had to pay crops and cattle to the company each year. 

One of them, Manuel de Gerrit de Reus, was accused with eight others of killing a Black man. The company decided to execute only one of them, and de Reus drew the short straw. But when the officials tried to execute him, both nooses around his neck broke. At the behest of witnesses, they pardoned him instead. 

Five months later, eight Black Americans returned to court, demanding their full freedom. They cited the arrival of English soldiers, who might re-enslave them. Despite those fears, the Black Americans managed to keep their freedom and lived north of what is now Washington Square Park, creating New York City’s first free Black community.

This article first appeared on Mississippi Today and is republished here under a Creative Commons license.

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