By Sam Douglass

The Green Mountain Birthing Center, a nonprofit organization based out of a new clinic in Morrisville, is working to give families more birthing plan options. The nonprofit plans to open a full-service freestanding birth center in Waterbury by 2028, which they say will help address a great need in the region.

For many Americans, giving birth looks like epidurals, paperwork, the smell of disinfectant, and often leaving the hospital with a hefty bill. But, for those using birthing centers, the experience looks entirely different. Freestanding birthing centers are non-clinical and often look like a residential home. Like a hospital, they have medical equipment, they can conduct fetal monitoring, and they’re operated by licensed professionals, but they provide a middle ground between a home birth and the hospital system for low-risk births. 

For Mary Lou Kopas, a nurse midwife and founding member of the nonprofit, they are fulfilling a critical access problem after the closure of Copley Hospital’s maternity services last year, which left the region in what’s known as a “maternity desert.” When services closed, Vermonters in Lamoille County and neighboring towns of Greensboro, Hardwick, and Craftsbury were left without a local option to access professional services for giving birth. The Morrisville clinic and Waterbury facility come in response and aim to bridge that gap for low-risk pregnancies.

Kopas worked at Copley for about two and a half years before the closure and has since worked per diem at Gifford Medical Center, Northeastern Vermont Regional Hospital, and Central Vermont Medical Center. In an interview, Kopas said Copley’s maternity program had a relatively low but steady volume, though some of the state’s best birth outcomes.

Kopas and four other founders organized the nonprofit in 2025 after the passage of Vermont’s new birth center laws. They have since built a board, raised roughly $50,000 through donations and small grants, and are applying for 501(c)(3) status. Its new Morrisville clinic is now providing prenatal, postpartum, and gynecological care, while they raise money to open their full-service facility in Waterbury.

Their Waterbury facility will offer care for low-risk deliveries and newborn care, often for short stays around four to six hours post-delivery. The model occupies a middle ground between hospital and home births. Clients receive care from midwives in a setting that’s less clinical than a hospital, while still equipped to respond to emergencies, including newborn resuscitation and hemorrhages. However, a birth center is not intended to replace a hospital. A birth center cannot provide epidurals or perform cesarean deliveries, so clients with complications would need to be transferred to a hospital.

This makes the distance between a birth center and a hospital an important part of the model. Kopas said a birth center should be within about 30 minutes of obstetric services. Waterbury, she said, provides an ideal location. Waterbury has access to the interstate and is close to Central Vermont Medical Center. The goal is not to replace hospitals, Kopas said. There will always be pregnancies and births that require hospital care, including high-risk births that cannot safely be managed at a birth center. 

“Why choose a birth center if they can’t get an epidural, and they have to go home early,” Kopas joked.

For many clients, she said, the answer is the kind of care they receive. Clients may want access to trained professionals and equipment without the hospital environment or interventions that may not be medically necessary but are hospital policy, including drugs to induce pregnancy. Care is individualized, allowing midwives to understand a client’s history as well as their social and emotional standing. According to Kopas, many people are having bad experiences in hospitals, describing clients who felt they were not listened to or respected.

Part of the nonprofit’s mission to address societal pressures on Vermonters. The distance can be a significant burden for people who cannot easily take time away from work, lack reliable transportation, or are already dealing with other social stressors. With centrally located maternity services, the nonprofit hopes to alleviate this burden. 

“When resources go down, it’s generally people with the least resources who are affected the most,” Kopas said. 

The nonprofit also conducts telehealth calls to reduce the burden of travel ,and they plan to keep the Morrisville clinic open to serve the community, even after the Waterbury birth center opens. Foremost, they want to offer choices for routine care and reduce travel to hospitals or their Waterbury facility.

The center’s plans come as the state is finalizing the framework for licensure before the new law (Act 19 of 2025) kicks in next year. The Department of Health is currently working through that rulemaking process, and their proposed rules are open for public comment on their website from August 3 through September 18, with a public hearing scheduled for September 11.