This is the mailing list for Friends of Iowa Midwives, a group dedicated to promoting access to out-of-hospital births for Iowa families. We are a diverse and friendly mix of past, present, and future consumers, childbirth professionals, and folks who just plain support our mission. Our current focus is offering legislation in 2009 that would license Certified Professional Midwives to attend homebirths in the state of Iowa. We hope to keep this list low-key and drama-free, to be used to inform members about upcoming events, solicit agenda items, and discuss group decisions to be made. List membership guidelines: Please keep posts specific to the group mission and group business: in particular, keep the focus on local issues, events, media, etc. There are other groups online where the discussion has a national scope, so take any BIG topics there. This is a list for Iowans and Iowa matters. Questions or concerns about group policies, legislation, actions, etc, should be debated or discussed at a meeting, or in a small group with the persons involved, not within the listserv. Certainly, important issues that you want to you address in a meeting can (and should!) be introduced here and added to meeting agendas for further discussion, but group members hope to keep the listserv drama free and their inboxes fairly unflooded. Steering committee meetings and general assembly meetings are great places to address these kinds of "big" concerns. If you have a question for a specific person, go to the listserv's homepage and click on "members" and you can find their individual email address - send your correspondence there :). Questions about the listserv or concerns can be directed to the moderator, Lauren Whitehead, at laurendoula@yahoo.com at any time. Failure to adhere to listserv policies will result in a warning, and then a ban.