Navigating choice: How Florida midwives are adapting to changes in reproductive health

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Abby Reichardt remembers playing pretend family with her best friend by stuffing pillows under her shirt to look pregnant, and lining up other objects to imagine using as children to mother.

She also spent time looking after cow calves, puppies and newborn birds at her friend’s farm – and wondered what it would be like to bring a life into the world.

“I would desperately hope that someone would trust me – when I was old enough – to pick up their baby,” Reichardt said.







Years later, she’s a licensed midwife who has helped bring nearly 500 lives into the world.







She co-owns Midwives Cooperative, a midwifery in Gainesville offering preconception, prenatal and postpartum care for expectant mothers. While at work, Reichardt shuffles through test tubes, meets with clients and listens for a small heartbeat in the co-op’s examination room.

A year after Florida’s six-week abortion ban took effect, midwives are still adapting to changing political attitudes concerning reproductive health care. Clients are doing the same, seeking out resources and tests to determine the course of their pregnancies within a couple of weeks.

Senate Bill 300 removed access to legal abortions after six weeks of pregnancy, a window when most people aren’t aware they are pregnant, NPR reported. It permits victims of rape, incest or human trafficking to receive abortions before reaching 15 weeks.

Midwives Cooperative, which was founded in 2004, sees four to six births each month, and its four midwives and two student midwives stay busy, Reichardt said. The services they provide, including a lab panel, counseling and reviewing fertility awareness, can start at preconception.

“Midwives are a bridge between a pretty broken maternal health system in this country,” she said. “Part of that bridging is sinking into the community aspect more. It’s kind of like mothering the mother.”





Florida's six week abortion ban raises concerns about medication access

Erica Barclay, a licensed midwife and owner of Meadow Midwifery in Spring Hill, Hernando County, is also preparing for an uncertain future while supporting the choices her clients make.







After multiple negative experiences at an obstetrician while pregnant with her firstborn, Barclay decided to do a home birth with a midwife. She later enrolled in the Florida School of Traditional Midwifery in Gainesville, and said she now helps deliver three to five babies a month.







“A very common misrepresentation of midwives is that because we help facilitate life coming into the world that we must be pro-life,” Barclay said. “My community here is very pro whatever the family is choosing for themselves.”







In response to the six-week ban, Barclay said she has stocked up on misoprostol, a medication that helps treat postpartum hemorrhages. However, misoprostol is also used as an abortion pill. Barclay believes that increased stigma toward abortion can jeopardize access to the medicine.






Jamarah Amani is another licensed midwife and executive director of Southern Birth Justice Network, a reproductive rights advocacy group serving clients in Dade County. Laws that restrict abortion only worsen health disparities, especially in marginalized communities, Amani said.

Saying education is key to its mission, she said the group offers certifications for doulas, birth justice doulas and midwife assistant training to increase the number of providers in those communities. The group also works with Planned Parenthood, abortion clinics and doulas to offer as much support to birthing parents as it can, she said.


Combining midwifery and activism to combat health disparities


Through the network, Amani said she works alongside Planned Parenthood, abortion clinics and abortion doulas to offer as much support to birthing parents as she can.







People don't consider the possibility of a person who already has multiple children and can't have more is trying to find information about an abortion, she said.







The ban has led Midwives Cooperative to educate people who are uncertain as early as possible.







“Sometimes folks are looking for resources,” said Kerri Audette, the co-op’s co-owner. “My job is to provide them information, risks of procedures and alternatives within my own scope.”







Genetic screenings can be done as early as nine weeks, making the information valuable for certain clients to determine whether they need to travel out of state for an abortion, Audette said.







The accuracy of the tests varies, but they are often used to search for chromosomal disorders that lead to miscarriages or stillbirths, down syndrome or missing sex chromosomes. Most commonly, the tests help determine whether the pregnancy will be low or high risk.







“The best I can do is provide evidence-based care, and trust my clients are going to take the direction that they need to go,” Audette said.

 

Kerri Audette (right) and Abby Reichardt co-own a midwifery in Gainesville. “What makes midwifing unique is treating the whole person,” Audette said. “To be able to provide the best care, I need to know who these clients are.” (Delia Rose Sauer/WUFT News) (5374x3582, AR: 1.5002791736460077)