At 6:58 a.m. Thursday, Dr. Angela Adams Powell addressed the nurses at the south Alabama hospital where she had delivered babies for more than 25 years.
“I was afraid I might not be able to speak,” she said, her voice breaking, “and I might not.”
In two minutes, the labor and delivery department at Monroe County Hospital would shutter, leaving the community without a birthing hospital. In two minutes, pregnant women in a county where 22% of residents live below the poverty line would be forced to travel 35 to 103 miles for the next nearest option.
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Liz Kirby, Monroe County Hospital’s CEO, said a physician shortage was behind the closing. After the Supreme Court decision overturning Roe v. Wade, some hospitals in states with strict abortion bans have warned that it could become harder to recruit OB-GYNs, though Kirby said she wasn’t aware of that as a factor in this case. Residency applications for the specialty have also dropped more in states with abortion bans than nationally.
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Alabama is in the throes of a maternal and infant health crisis, with some of the highest rates of infant and maternal mortality in the country. Physicians say those losses should be answered with more access to care — not less.
No they won’t. They’ll give birth at home without any medical assistance, in severe pain, risking the life of themselves and their babies, because they don’t have the transportation or health insurance and their minimum wage job won’t give them time off anyway.
I worked in or around public health for a long time. You just broke off a piece of my heart, and fired my rage center. That is all too true, and all too ignored. The truth is never told and if it is it is not believed.
Thank you for saying this, I only hope it makes others just as sad and as enraged as it does me.
I wish it wasn’t true. It makes me just as heartbroken and angry as you.
I know it isn’t much of a response, I know we do what we can. If I could I would hug you, we could sob together, but Keep up the fight, Vote if you can, make your voice heard, don’t stop being that thorn in the side that keep attention where it is needed instead of on that shiny thing over there. And I promise to do the same!
Thank you and I will keep fighting. I think the people who need that hug are the women who will not get the help they need and the obstetrics workers who can’t do anything to help them. One side will be dying and the other side will be aware of the deaths and know they would be able to help if they were given the opportunity.
My MIL works in public health as well. The stories I’ve heard man. She’s also been the only one to try to talk my and my wife out of fostering (we have two kids of our own, have room in our house and hearts for another but don’t really want to do the whole pregnancy and newborn thing again. We’re still on the fence). Her reasoning is that we won’t be able to handle the heartbreak and having to be part of a lot of these stories.
I am not one to ask for trust from strangers on the Internet so take this as you will. I have seen true triumphs in the adoption/foster system, but much more often it goes very badly. I have seen good families destroyed, and individuals broken, I don’t mean to poison that well, I want that system to work, but right now they are so underfunded and understaffed that there is no way for them to be effective, and the religious route is laughable at best, those organizations are charitably described as preditory, I have other words but they don’t belong in polite conversation.
Well, and if your foster system is anything like the one in my state, the system will lie to you about what the kid needs and your biological children could suddenly be at risk of being sexually abused by the foster.
Super neat.
Fuck that, I’d never risk my kids in that way.
Yep. That was one of her concerns as well. Granted we live in different (though adjacent) states, we’ve known some other foster parents in our state and that particular concern never came up.
And if the baby’s life is endangered in the process, guess who’s going to jail?
Yeah, they left out the criminalization of stillbirths, and also how in many states it’s a crime to have a home birth without a registered midwife or some other duly certified birth helper:
NYTimes: How My Stillbirth Became a Crime – one of a eight-part series, not behind paywall
She lost her child in a home birth. Prosecutors charged her with murder
She was jailed for losing a pregnancy. Her nightmare could become more common
Or they will show up in crisis at the emergency room. More of them will die and more of their babies will die, because help came too late or not at all.
Worse, this is what the majority seems to want. They just don’t understand the repercussions.