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.
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
Prosecutors drop murder charge against Oceanside woman whose infant died after home birth (she still had to plead to a lesser charge and was sentenced to two years in prison)
She lost her child in a home birth. Prosecutors charged her with murder