The front page of Thursday’s Star-Advertiser featured the signing of a law, Senate Bill 1 (Act 2), which will protect Hawaii health care workers who provide abortions (“New laws protect abortion providers, restore ways of charging defendants”). This is fantastic news!

Legislative action codifying and protecting reproductive choices should be celebrated. And as noted by both Gov. Josh Green and state Sen. Joy San Buenaventura: protecting the abortion service providers protects women’s reproductive choices.

Sadly, the Legislature recently snuffed out another category of reproductive rights — the right to choose what kind of birth attendant you prefer to assist you with your birth. House Bill 955 and Senate Bill 1047 would have allowed us to continue to choose traditional and cultural birth attendants, like the ones who presided over my births 30-40 years ago. Despite over a thousand pages of supporting testimony, both bills were killed, making many of our local birth attendants illegal on July 1, 2023.

Birthing families and midwives contacted their legislators, wrote emails, called offices, requested meetings — and when it became clear that their legislators were ignoring them, some even held a sit-in at the state Capitol. All this effort was to no avail. HB 955 died in the Finance Committee (despite having no fiscal impact), with no explanation why.

The bill was never put to a final vote by the state House of Representatives, so citizens couldn’t see who truly supported their right to choose and who did not.

What does this mean for birthing women?

Our midwife licensing laws are so prohibitively restrictive that they require midwives to attend schools that don’t exist in Hawaii. Many of our local midwives cannot continue to practice unless they spend thousands of dollars to attend a mainland school. Some were able to do this and got licensed, but some cannot afford the costs of tuition, travel and time away from their families.

With those traditionally trained birth care providers forced out of practice, it means that women in our rural areas who live far from a hospital will have even fewer birth care providers to choose from. Drastically limiting the number of existing care providers is a dangerous situation in a state that already has a critical lack of doctors. Many people will be left with no other choice but to give birth unattended, or — as some Hawaii island mothers testified has happened to them — on the side of the road as they attempt to drive two hours to the nearest hospital.

Ironically, the quotes from legislators passing the bill protecting abortion providers could be lifted word for word from testimony supporting HB 955: The right to “reproductive life choices” and a need to ensure that birth care providers “do not have to fear arrest or extradition.” Or, as Gov. Green noted, “What this bill means is that “we support women.”

These concepts apply not only to abortion providers, but also to traditional birth attendants and certified professional midwives who are ineligible for licensure because of our absurdly high licensure requirements.

Hawaii may “continue to be a beacon for abortion rights,” as Sen. San Buenaventura said. But it is NOT a beacon for birthing rights, or freedom for ALL reproductive choices.

Ramona Hussey is a homebirth mother, former attorney and lifelong women’s rights advocate.