A Hawaii judge is temporarily blocking the state from enforcing a law requiring the licensing of practitioners and teachers of traditional Native Hawaiian midwifery.
FILE - Supporters of a lawsuit challenging a Hawaii midwife licensure law gather outside a courthouse in Honolulu, June 10, 2024. On Monday, July 22, a Hawaii judge temporarily blocked the state from enforcing a licensure law against those who practice and teach traditional Native Hawaiian midwifery.
Their complaint also said the law threatens the plaintiffs' ability to serve women who seek traditional Native Hawaiian births. Ki‘inaniokalani Kahoʻohanohano testified that a lack of Native Hawaiian midwives when she prepared to give birth for the first time in 2003 inspired her to eventually become one herself. She described how she spent years helping to deliver as many as three babies a month, receiving them in a traditional cloth made of woven bark and uttering sacred chants as she welcomed them into the world.
The state eventually adopted a system under which councils versed in Native Hawaiian healing certify traditional practitioners, though the plaintiffs in the lawsuit say their efforts to form such a council for midwifery have failed. She testified last month how she learned customary practices from Kahoʻohanohano, including cultural protocols for a placenta, such as burying it to connect a newborn to its ancestral lands.
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