With tears and a lullaby, a rural Alabama hospital stops delivering babies
With tears and a lullaby, a rural Alabama hospital stops delivering babies
The staff at Monroe County Hospital in Alabama said goodbye and played Brahms' "Lullaby" on the labor and delivery ward's final day.
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.
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.
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.
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.
This was the goal the whole time. Probirth people don't give two shits about babies and children. Expect sexual violence against children and women in that town to sky rocket. Expect the poverty rate to increase as well. Except infant and pregnancy deaths to go up as well.
I would imagine their goal was to enforce their moral code on everyone, regardless of the reality of life. This is the result. I do agree that Republicans don't give two shits about children or women who they don't have emotional investment in. This is a "major issue" they can say they made progress on, since they can't claim they did anything else.
That's a part of it. But ensuring a poor, unhealthy, uneducated, and subservient population is the main goal. Moral codes are just a shield to hide behind as those making these rules are the most corrupt and immoral people in the world. They know emancipation of the working people is the end of suffering and the end of their (white wealthy men) control.
They're not pro-birth. Pro-birth is living wages and access to health care.
They're anti-women, forced birthers, and stochastic/social murderers.
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.
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.
As with everything Republicans do, the cruelty is the point.
Someone has to be the underclass.
This is happening all over rural America. I have read of similar happening here in KS.
i hate this fucking timeline
It’s okay; those that survive will be excellently demoralized and disposable wage slaves. Sigh.
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!!!!!