Advocacy for Midwives

Hermine Hayes-Klein is one of the most experienced, knowledgeable, and well-known attorneys for midwives around the world. 

Since 2011, Hermine has represented Nurse Midwives, Direct Entry Midwives, and traditional midwives before licensing boards, in civil litigation, in criminal proceedings, and in a wide variety of additional advocacy settings ranging from negotiating transfer agreements with local hospitals to resolving disputes with former clients.

Hermine represents midwives because she understands and values midwifery, having given birth to both of her sons with a midwife in the Netherlands in 2007 and 2010. After her experience with the Dutch birth system—which treats midwives as the first line of maternity care and uses doctors and hospitals for the event they are needed—and having learned about human rights in maternal health around the world while teaching law at The Hague University, Hermine was inspired to advocate for maternity care systems that provide person-centered care and fully integrate midwifery to uphold the fundamental rights of birthing mothers. She believes that the legal and systemic integration of midwives is critical to efforts that seek to provide economically efficient care and optimize maternal and perinatal health across populations. 

Hermine uses her knowledge and expertise of midwifery to provide empathic and empowering advocacy to each midwife client, and she helps midwives navigate legal systems that are only beginning to understand the role of midwives.

Her clients include unlicensed traditional midwives, Certified Professional Midwives (CPMs), Licensed Direct-Entry Midwives (LDEMs), and Certified Nurse Midwives (CNMs). She has consulted on cases in licensing systems outside the United States and has spoken widely on issues at the intersection of law and midwifery at conferences, including the International Confederation of Midwives (ICM), the Midwives Alliance of North America (MANA), the American College of Nurse Midwives (ACNM), Virtual International Day of the Midwife (VIDM), and state and regional associations of midwives, including, most recently, the Norwegian BirthFestival and the Asociacion Parteras de Puerto Rico.