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.
…
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.
…
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.
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.
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.
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.
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?
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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.
Senator Tuberville, currently stiffarming the army’s leadership to create a queue for fascist drones to serve dictator trump in the Army on the premise that he’s agains the Army’s allowing abortions, is the senator from this state.
Doing great work there coach. No wonder you were elected.
Fucking traitors, the lot of them.
As with everything Republicans do, the cruelty is the point.
Someone has to be the underclass.
Owning the libs by making sure you can’t have babies safely. Right on brand for the GQP
The people making these decisions are geriatric, they won’t be having any babies themselves. These are people who should be in retirement homes playing bingo instead of ruling the country.
I think that’s a little simplistic. Conservatives trend older for sure but the hate they carry isn’t going to die with them. It gets passed on, and like sexual abuse it seems some victims will break the cycle while others will continue to perpetuate it. I wish we could just wait them out, it would be easier.
While true, young Republicans believe the same exact shit and vote the same way (some even more extreme). They just want people to suffer.
Yeah they don’t see it as unnecessary suffering but as suffering due to choices made. They see all abortion as preventable, and so if you do something that may result in pregnancy they think you deserve the kid you’re stuck with.
There’s also the ones who just believe abortion is always wrong and any suffering to stop it is worth it
(unless it happens to them, then they’re the exception and any choice they make is righteous)
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This is happening all over rural America. I have read of similar happening here in KS.
It’s okay; those that survive will be excellently demoralized and disposable wage slaves. Sigh.
i hate this fucking timeline
How much of this is simply due to professionals, including doctors, leaving poorer, more rural areas (rather than to abortion bans)? A poor county in south Alabama isn’t where I would choose to live if I had a choice (which doctors do), and whatever bonds motivated people who did live there to return after getting their medical training are apparently fraying…
The notion of not wanting to live in the south as a doctor would apply to doctors 30 years ago as well, yet this sudden loss of OB/GYN’s has spiked immediately following the Roe reversal. It seems reasonable that the SCOTUS decision has influenced this loss.
You clearly don’t live in the South.
I live in a city, and several gynecology offices have closed down in the past year, including several doctors listed in the r/childfree directory.
Hahahaha REPUBLICANS!!!
