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Georgia Midwife Sues for Right to Call Herself ‘Midwife’
by Matthew Vadum

A nationally prominent midwife is suing Georgia authorities, claiming they’re engaged in regulatory overreach as they violate her First Amendment rights by punishing her for accurately calling herself a midwife.

Debbie Pulley, who helped found the Georgia Midwifery Association, which established standards of care for midwives, filed a lawsuit Dec. 11 in federal court in Atlanta against the Georgia Board of Nursing after a regulatory change made it unlawful for midwives to identify themselves as such unless they possess nursing credentials. A midwife is a trained health care professional who attends at births and who works with women during pregnancy, birth, and the postpartum phase.

Pulley, an Atlanta resident, has attended at more than a thousand births since 1970 and has been recognized as a certified professional midwife for 24 years. The certification is awarded by the North American Registry of Midwives, on whose board she currently serves.

But now the Georgia Board of Nursing is threatening Pulley “with a $500 fine every time she uses the title she worked so hard to achieve, or even utters the verboten word ‘midwife’ to describe herself,” according to the legal complaint, a copy of which was obtained by The Epoch Times.

Continues - paywall w/ some free each month:

https://www.theepochtimes.com/georgia-midwife-sues-for-right-to-call-herself-midwife_3174991.html

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