TORONTO, March 2, 2001 -- Passing the Torch: The Birth Centre Vision is a one-day conference which will examine the potential for re-establishing a free-standing birth centre in the Toronto area. The conference, which is co-hosted by the Toronto Birth Centre Inc. and York University's Centre for Health Studies, will be held at York University, Saturday, March 3, 10 a.m. to 5 p.m.

Approved by the provincial NDP government in 1994, but cancelled by the Harris Tories in 1995, the Toronto Birth Centre was intended to be a community-based, fully accessible one-stop shop for childbearing and childrearing families. It was designed to offer comprehensive counselling, education, care and support to healthy women throughout pregnancy, birth and the postpartum period. Women would also be given a choice of receiving care from either a midwife or a physician.

"The free-standing birth centre model has been a vision of women in Ontario for more that 20 years," says Toronto Birth Centre President Wendy Sutton, a Toronto lawyer and former member of the Interim Regulatory Council on Midwifery. "Following the Ontario government's cancellation of the program in 1995, and throughout the recent era of health services restructuring, proponents of the birth centre model have not lost sight of this vision. This conference is designed to reinvigorate the dream of the free-standing birth centre as a legitimate, very cost-effective and timely option for childbearing women in the province."

The conference's keynote speaker will be Ruth Watson Lubic, a certified midwife and an adjunct professor in the School of Nursing at Georgetown University in Washington, D.C. Lubic's address, "A "One-Stop `Shop' for Childbearing and Childrearing Families," will review the evolution of freestanding birth centers in the United States from 1975 to the present, emphasizing the importance of their demonstrated ability to empower families to take charge of their health. Lubic's vision lead to the establishment of the first free-standing birth centre in the United States, the Maternity Center Association opened in Manhattan in 1975. She is the co-author of Childbearing ­ A Book of Alternatives (McGraw-Hill, 1986).

Former Ontario NDP Health Minister Ruth Grier, will also address the conference on how birth centres have the potential to be a very important component of the health care system. As health minister, Grier was responsible for legalizing midwifery in Ontario and announcing the establishment of the first birth centres to be publicly funded in the province.

The Conference will be held in the Moot Court, (located off the main entrance), Osgoode Hall Law School, York University Campus, 4700 Keele Street.

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