When Tamara Taitt moved to Georgia in 2023 to run the Atlanta Birth Center, she found herself in what she calls “an extraordinary position”. Under Georgia law, the center’s own executive director cannot provide routine clinical care for the center’s own clients. She could even face criminal charges for doing so.

Taitt is a nationally accredited midwife. She directs one of the only freestanding birth centers in the state – a destination for women seeking to give birth outside a hospital, cared for by midwives rather than obstetricians. Families choose birth centers to access more holistic, less medicalized prenatal care and birth, and to avoid invasive medical interventions in a state where C-sections occur at three times the rate recommended by the World Health Organization.

But in Georgia, not all midwives can provide that care.

Taitt previously ran another birth center in Miami. She is a certified professional midwife (CPM), with a credential that requires extensive clinical training and allows licensees to practice midwifery in 39 states. But in Georgia, midwifery laws are among the strictest in the country.