Fewer Options for Moms Seeking Natural Births
Midwives are protesting the shuttering of Manhattan's only natural birth center that served women on Medicaid.
By Lindsey McCormack
November 16, 2009
City Limits

At the nation's oldest public hospital, administrators are ending a 12-year-old effort to provide low-income mothers with natural birth options. Photo by Lindsey McCormack.

The Birth Center at Bellevue Hospital was designed for the kind of birth experience that many moms, even the well-connected, find elusive. Labor was to unfold in spacious, comfortable rooms with sweeping views of the East River; midwives would massage women through labor pains; and world-class obstetricians would be at hand to address any complications. All this in a public hospital that primarily serves low-income patients and the uninsured, many of them immigrants. ...