ACT Health Minister Katy Gallagher has ruled out a free-standing birth centre in Canberra and says the current centre will continue to operate within the planned Women's and Children's Hospital.
Lobby group Friends of the Birth Centre has urged the Government to expand the centre's services and renewed claims that plans for the new $90million hospital did not include a dedicated birth centre.
A birth centre is run by midwives and offers pregnant women the chance to have ''natural'' births with minimal medical intervention.
The ACT's only birth centre is attached to Canberra Hospital and delivers more than 600 babies a year.
The group's convener, Emma Davidson, said pregnant women had only a verbal statement from Ms Gallagher to reassure them the birth centre would continue to operate.
''We had a meeting with Katy Gallagher ... just before the election and she made a verbal commitment that there would be some form of birth centre, it would be maybe a separate entrance to one of the birth pods or something like that so women don't feel that they're coming into a hospital environment to have their babies,'' she said.
''But since then we haven't managed to have any meetings with the Department of Health and we don't know what's going on.''
Ms Davidson said the high demand for places at the birth centre showed there was an increasing desire for non-hospital births.
''At the moment we've got a birth centre that's attached to the Canberra Hospital and that's fantastic ... But there are some women who would prefer to be in a free-standing birth centre that's not overseen by obstetrics at a hospital and these women in Canberra don't really have anywhere to go,'' she said.
Ms Gallagher guaranteed the birth centre would continue to operate at the new hospital and would ensure Friends of the Birth Centre were consulted on the architect's plans.
But she said there would not be a free-standing birth centre.
''There will be a separate birth centre, like the one that's run now, with midwives, with midwife-led care.
''If there is a need to have more capacity within the existing birth centre then that certainly will be looked at.''
A report published by the Australian Institute of Health and Welfare last week showed Canberran women were second only to West Australians when it came to having their babies in a birth centre.
About 7 per cent of ACT mothers chose to give birth in a birth centre.