A nationally accredited obstetrician faces 95 charges for posing as a midwife and criminal negligence in the death of a child, but her predominantly religious clientele avidly support her.
Elizabeth Catlin, 54, of Penn Yan, New York, was released on a $15,000 bail after being arrested in her home in 2018 and pleaded not guilty to all 95 charges brought against her during the arraignment in Yates County Court on Tuesday.
The investigation by the New York State police in conjunction with the New York Education Department and the District Attorney’s Office alleged Catlin had been posing as a midwife for many years, exploiting women of the Mennonite community in Yates County. Still, women from the Mennonite community claimed Catlin did not exploit them in any way.
There are three kinds of midwife licenses: CNMs, CMs, and CPMs. The latter is mostly used by midwives who attend births at home. CPMs are accepted in 34 states with another 12 pending, but the state of New York only recognizes only the first two.
Catlin, who was trained at an Idaho-based midwifery college, only holds a CPM license and therefore allegedly violated New York state law by practicing midwifery without proper documentation—sufficient grounds for officers to arrest her at her home on Nov. 14, 2018.
But there was more: Among those 95 charges were 31 counts each of criminal possession of a forged instrument in the second degree, falsifying business records in the first degree, identity theft in the second degree, and one charge of unauthorized practice of the profession of midwifery, ABC reported.
The identity theft charges relate to the allegation that Catlin used a physician’s identity to perform lab tests for her clients.
According to Yates County District Attorney Todd Casella, the many charges merely form a “representative sample of what we had evidence of,” adding, “There could’ve been over a thousand,” Yahoo Lifestyle reported.
Catlin had to refrain from assisting delivering babies by the end of 2018 and was forced to sell her house to cover court costs. Luckily, she found a job as a human research study coordinator focusing on Mennonites at the University of Rochester. She also set up a GoFundMe page to cover the legal fees.
The most serious charge was that of criminally negligent homicide that led to the death of a newborn child in October 2018.
“That’s the most devastating,” Catlin said, Yahoo reported.
This charge relates to a baby boy that was born septic. Catlin rushed the mother to the hospital even before the delivery had started. Six hours after birth, the child died.
“What they’re trying to do, I guess, is make some kind of crazy example of this person—for what, I’m not exactly sure,” Vicki Hedley, president of the Midwives Alliance of North America, told Yahoo. “The fact that she is being indicted for negligent homicide is way over the top since the baby died six hours after being in her care,” she added.
Homebirthing is a right that most women of the Mennonite communities in New York State practice. With Catlin’s retirement from the job, hundreds of Mennonite women in Yates County delivered their babies at home without any professional attendance in what midwifery advocates call the “maternity-care desert” of rural upstate New York.
Efforts to change the state law called the Unified Midwifery Practice Act, which would allow CPMs to carry out their jobs, have been dragging on only sluggishly. “‘My body, My choice’ only seems to go one way in New York State,” Catlin remarked on her GoFundMe page, which has so far raised some $21,000.
The case is scheduled to return for argument of motions on April 14.
