Midwifery, birth centers, and health care reform

Midwifery and birth centers are placed within a concept of social structuring of difference between dominant and subordinate groups and their resultant inequality. Midwifery, and the birth center as a place for the practice of midwifery, present a philosophical view of childbirth that is different from the existing medical and acute care view and rooted in the education and socialization of the respective practitioners. In exercising freedom to act on that philosophical view, nurse-midwives and the physicians and nurses with whom they practice in birth centers are well positioned to be included in the reform efforts to devise a system for improving access to affordable quality health care.