Chicago Tribune: Some have called the South Side a birthing ‘desert.’ A nurse midwife is working to change that.

By Lisa Schencke

Jeanine Valrie Logan sat in traffic for nearly two hours while she was in labor with her third child.

Logan was determined to have her daughter at a birth center — a type of small facility focused on childbirth, often staffed by midwives. But there weren’t any birth centers near her home in the south suburbs, so she traveled nearly 30 miles to Berwyn.

“I’m not an anomaly,” Logan said, of the time it took her to get to the birth center. “People deserve to have that access in their own community.”

Now, six years later, Logan is working to make that belief a reality. Logan, who is a certified nurse midwife, worked with lawmakers in recent years to expand the number of birth centers allowed in Illinois, and she is seeking permission from a state board to open a new birth center on the South Side of Chicago.

READ THE FULL ARTICLE HERE