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.
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.