Birthing centers bill advances, wins state Senate approval for first time

By Sarah Ladd
Kentucky Lantern

The long-debated controversy over freestanding birthing centers in Kentucky reached the floor of the Senate Friday as a bill aimed at paving the way for them easily won approval, 34-0 with two lawmakers passing.

Senators stood and clapped after the vote. The bill now heads to the House, which last year approved legislation aimed at removing hindrances to opening birthing centers. That bill died in the Senate. Friday’s Senate vote offers hope to birthing- center supporters that this year’s Senate Bill 17 will become law.

SB 17 would remove the certificate of need requirement for freestanding birth centers, which advocates have said is the main hurdle blocking them in the state. 

Freestanding birth centers are small, homelike facilities where people with healthy pregnancies can have low-intervention births. 

SB 17, sponsored by Sen. Shelley Funke Frommeyer, R-Alexandria, requires centers to have a physician medical director and a hospital transfer agreement, which helped garner support among lawmakers.

SB 17 also says freestanding birth centers would have to be within 30 miles of a hospital. If a hospital closed after a center opened within 30 miles, that birth center would be exempt from the distance requirement, essentially grandfathered into the place.  

Among those passing was Sen. Donald Douglas, R-Nicholasville. A physician, Douglas said in committee that Funke Frommeyer had done a “wonderful job” on the bill but expressed his lingering concern about medical fallout from unforeseen complications during birth.