Outlawing Midwifery: She’s 77 Years Old. She’s Helped Deliver 1,200 Babies. Nebraska Wants to Put Her in Prison.

Judy Jones has been helping babies into the world for more than a quarter century. She is 77 years old, she is a South Dakota midwife, and she says God called her to this work. Over 1,200 home births later, Nebraska wants to send her to prison for it.

She faces multiple felony counts for assisting with births outside hospital walls in a state that explicitly forbids it. One charge stems from the death of a newborn in 2022, a baby with an umbilical cord wrapped around her neck that Jones could not free in time. That is a tragedy, and it deserves to be named plainly. But the full architecture of what is happening here, to Jones and to midwives across the country, demands a wider lens.

The Map of What’s Missing

Before getting to the laws being used against these women, it’s worth sitting with the landscape they’re operating in.