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.
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.
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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.