About Us

Bay State Birth Coalition is a consumer-led organization. We work closely with midwives, birth centers, and other stakeholders in the community.

What we want:

1. Legalization, licensure, and integration for Certified Professional Midwives to practice to the full scope of their training

2. Support for birth centers including financial investments and removal of regulatory barriers

3. Medicaid coverage for out-of-hospital births

4. Equitable reimbursement for midwives in all care settings

The Out-of-Hospital Birth Access and Safety Act

Do you dream of a Massachusetts where families have clear and transparent information when seeking a midwife for an out-of-hospital birth? Where every community has a freestanding birth center? Where MassHealth and private insurers provide reimbursement, expanding access to community birth options?  Where midwives can collaborate freely with doctors and hospitals when needed? Where Certified Professional Midwives can open free standing birth centers? Where more families have the confidence to choose an out-of-hospital birth? 

State recognition of Certified Professional Midwives (CPMs) is the first step to making these dreams a reality. 37 other states currently license Certified Professional Midwives. These states have more birth centers, more home births, and care that is covered by insurance and Medicaid. We know this dream can be realized.

The Board of Bay State Birth Coalition:

Emily Anesta, Tiffany Vassell, Judy Norsigian, Jo-Anna Rorie, Eugene Declercq, Sarah Whedon

Emily Anesta

Emily is an engineer and a consumer advocate for increased access to midwifery. Emily co-founded the Bay State Birth Coalition in 2016.

Emily also co-founded the Birth Future Foundation, a national grantmaker for racial justice in midwifery and childbirth in 2020. She currently serves on the steering committee of Birth Equity and Justice Massachusetts (BEJMA). Previously, Emily was president of the Foundation for the Advancement of Midwifery and a consumer representative on the Board of the Massachusetts Midwives Alliance. She is an Executive Director of the 2016 film Why Not Home?, which explores maternity care in the US through the stories of doctors and nurses who attend births in hospitals but choose to have their own babies at home.

Emily has a Master and Bachelor of Science in Electrical and Computer Engineering. For over a decade, she led technology research and development projects at MIT.  Emily had her two children at home attended by midwives and was herself born at home with a midwife.

Tiffany Vassell, RN

Tiffany Vassell is a registered nurse who has worked as a labor and delivery nurse for several years at a community hospital in Cambridge. She has also served as a substance use nurse assisting patients with their addiction recovery at local clinics in the Boston area. She is a Black maternal health advocate who supports midwifery care, equity, autonomy, and access to home births and birth centers.

She has worked and advocated alongside Bay State Birth Coalition for The Out-of-Hospital Birth Access and Safety bill, Black maternal health, justice, and equity, and the establishment of the Neighborhood Birth Center. She is the founder of Nurses for Black Maternal Health and Equity, which seeks to diversify the perinatal workforce while addressing mental health issues. She also recently served as a Co-Chair for the Speaker Committee at the 5th Annual Black Maternal Health Conference, the largest Black maternal health conference in the country.

She has sat on several panels to discuss her work and advocacy in the maternal health space as well as written many articles. She is the awardee of the 2022 Image of the Professional Nurse awarded by the Massachusetts Nursing Association.

Judy Norsigian

Judy is a co-author of the classic book, Our Bodies, Ourselves, and was executive director of Our Bodies Ourselves from 2001 to 2015 (she still volunteers with this global nonprofit that advances the health and human rights of women and girls globally). Judy has appeared on hundreds of television and radio programs, served on the boards of the National Women’s Health Network (14 years) and Public Responsibility in Medicine and Research (24 years), and currently is a board member of Community Works, the Boston-area social justice coalition that raises funds through payroll-deduction charitable giving programs. Personal recognitions include the Public Service Award from the Massachusetts Public Health Association; the Radcliffe College Alumnae Association Annual Recognition Award; and the Massachusetts Health Council Award. She was also named one of “21 Leaders for the 21st Century” by Women’s eNews and holds honorary doctorates from Boston University and Simmons College.

Jo-Anna Rorie, cnm, msn, mph, facm, phd

Dr. Jo-Anna Rorie is the nurse coordinator for the Bridges to Moms program, one of three programs offered by Health Care Without Walls, a nonprofit volunteer program of physicians and nurse practitioners and community health workers who offer free medical care to homeless women across the lifespan. The Bridges to Moms is a program specifically designed to support pregnant and postpartum women homeless and their families around 4 key social determinants of health, housing, food security, transportation and personal safety. She has an extensive background in nurse midwifery, public health, diversity workforce development, social justice advocacy and has held many well-known leadership roles in midwifery at the local, regional and national levels.

Dr. Rorie began her career in the late 1980’s at a time in when Massachusetts was faced with an infant mortality crisis, especially in the Boston neighborhoods of North Dorchester, Mattapan and Roxbury. An extensive needs assessment led to a city-wide maternal and child health (MCH) agenda. Jo-Anna’s fingerprints were all over that agenda and the subsequent recommendations calling for community-based perinatal initiatives that would utilize nurse-midwifery services as a critical element of care for underserved communities. Her zest to be part of the next generation of solutions to public health challenges has not wavered in the 35 years of on the front line work even during the Covid 19 pandemic. She continues to do clinical practice as the post-partum rounder for the Nurse Midwifery practice at Boston Medical Center.

Dr. Rorie also serves on the steering committee of Birth Equity and Justice Massachusetts (BEJMA), and is the visionary behind the Neighborhood Birth Center, Boston’s first freestanding community birth center.

Eugene Declercq, PhD

Gene is a Professor of Community Health Sciences and Assistant Dean for DrPH Education at the Boston University School of Public Health and professor on the faculty of Obstetrics and Gynecology at the Boston University School of Medicine. He has served as lead author of national reports on women’s experiences in childbirth entitled Listening to Mothers I, II & III and New Mothers Speak Out and is the founder of the website www.birthbythenumbers.org.  He is a recipient of the Martha May Eliot Award from the American Public Health Association for service to maternal and child health in the U.S.  

Sarah Whedon, Ph.D

Sarah is founder of the Full-Spectrum Doula Circle and serves on the Board of Directors of the Massachusetts Alliance on Teen Pregnancy. She has taught women's and gender studies, religious studies, and ethics courses at Simmons College, Tufts University, Newbury College, UC Santa Barbara, and Cherry Hill Seminary. Sarah was founding director of the Boston Doula Project, managing editor of the Pagan Families blog at Patheos.com, and author of Birth on the Labyrinth Path: Sacred Embodiment in the Childbearing Year. She and her children were all born at home attended by midwives.