House approves $100K for Neighborhood Birth Center

On Tuesday, the Massachusetts House voted in favor of a consolidated budget amendment for public health that included $100K for Neighborhood Birth Center, a non-profit led by Black women to open Boston’s first freestanding birth center. Expanding access to midwifery and community birth settings outside of the hospital has been shown to have beneficial impacts on maternal and infant health as well as reduce health care costs. Currently, there are no fully operations birth centers in Eastern Massachusetts, and only one statewide, (Seven Sisters in Northampton). There are 400 birth centers across the U.S.; New Hampshire has four birth centers and Maine has three, both states with 80% fewer births each year than Massachusetts. We applaud the House’s decision to invest in community birth centers, and hope to see the Senate do the same.

Learn more about Neighborhood Birth Center: Watch their new 4 minute video!

An unprecedented number of expectant families in the Commonwealth have sought to give birth at home since the start of the pandemic due to their concerns about infection risk, comfort, safety, hospital restrictions on birthing options, and hospital visitor policies. While demand had been increasing steadily for years, a new CDC report has found that the home birth rate in Massachusetts increased by 47% from 2019 to 2020, while increasing 22% overall in the U.S. with higher increases for Black birthing people. Unfortunately, families continue to face critical safety gaps and inequitable access to out-of-hospital birth options. Our state is one of only 13 in the nation that still lacks a regulatory framework to license and integrate Certified Professional Midwives (CPMs) into the healthcare system. CPMs have the training and professional standards to safely provide care in out-of-hospital settings, attending most births at home and at least a third in birth centers nationally.