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Mass. midwifery licensure offers lessons and questions for Connecticut, speaker says
Summary
Rebecca Herman of the Bay State Birth Coalition described Massachusetts’ new certified professional midwife (CPM) licensure law, highlighting statutory protections, implementation choices and remaining questions about Medicaid payment, regulation and client autonomy.
Rebecca Herman, a certified professional midwife and board member of the Bay State Birth Coalition, told the Connecticut Midwestern Working Group on March 28 that Massachusetts’ new law licensing CPMs prioritized self‑regulation, flexible regulatory authority and inclusion of licensure within a broader maternal‑health equity package.
Herman said the statute requires a board of registration with a CPM majority, allows CPMs to own and run birth centers, mandates that the state public payer (MassHealth) allow CPMs to enroll, and intentionally left detailed scope, prescriptive formularies and many clinical specifics to rules and guidance to preserve flexibility as evidence and practice evolve.
Those choices, she said, were deliberate responses to concerns that folding midwifery into other professions would dilute the model of care. “When midwifery gets folded into other professions, it gets diluted and it becomes more like nursing. It becomes more like medicine. And we really need midwives to self‑regulate if…
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