Women in Alabama forced to drive up to 100 MILES for pregnancy care as hospitals close maternity units following abortion ban

Dr Jesanna Cooper, an OB-GYN who previously worked at Princeton Baptist Medical Center, the Birmingham hospital closing its maternity service, told NBC: ‘People are going to show up delivering in the ER, and you’re going to have bad outcomes’

More than a million people in Alabama will be left without maternity care as three hospitals prepare to stop delivering babies.

The maternity wards at Monroe County Hospital, Shelby Baptist Medical Center and Princeton Baptist Medical Center in Birmingham will shutter by the end of next month, leaving around 1.5 million in the counties of Shelby and Monroe without any birthing hospitals.

The hospitals said the decisions were made due to staffing shortages thought to be fueled by an exodus following the banning of abortions in the state — which already has the third worst maternal mortality rate and infant mortality rate in the country — and a lack of funds.

It will mean families searching for maternal care will need to drive up to 100 miles to the nearest hospital to see an OB-GYN.

Honour McDaniel, director of maternal and infant health initiatives for the March of Dimes in Alabama, told NBC News: ‘There’s a sense of dread knowing that there’s going to be families who are now not only driving to the county over, but driving through three counties.’ 

The maternity wards at Monroe County Hospital (pictured right), Shelby Baptist Medical Center (pictured left) and Princeton Baptist Medical Center in Birmingham will shutter by the end of next month, leaving around 1.5 million in the counties of Shelby and Monroe without any birthing hospitals

It will also mean that the primarily Black neighborhood in Birmingham no longer has the maternity unit it desperately needs.

Soon, mothers-to-be in Shelby County, with a population of more than 900,000 people, will be forced to travel a minimum of 17 miles farther to see an OB-GYN in a hospital.

People in Monroe County, where there are more than 750,000 people, will have to drive up to 100 miles. 

This is not that unusual for the state. According to the nonprofit organization March of Dimes, more than a third of the counties in Alabama are maternity care deserts, meaning they have no hospitals with obstetrics care, birth centers, OB-GYNs or certified nurse midwives.

Alabama’s mortality rate was 41.4 in 2018-2021, the latest data published by the Centers for Disease Control & Prevention. It is also double the national mortality rate of 23.5.

This is the number of deaths of women per 100,000 live births while pregnant or within 42 days of termination of pregnancy from something related to or made worse by the pregnancy or how it was managed, but not from accidental causes.

If people cannot get to a birthing hospital quickly enough in an emergency, ‘people are going to show up delivering in the ER, and you’re going to have bad outcomes,’ Dr Jesanna Cooper, an OB-GYN who previously worked at Princeton Baptist Medical Center, the Birmingham hospital closing its maternity service, told NBC.

She added: ‘If you show up with a very premature baby and deliver in the ER, and you don’t have a NICU and you don’t have an obstetrics team, things aren’t going to go well.’

Monroe County Hospital said it was shuttering its labor and delivery unit due to a staff shortage.

The department only has one physician, but at least two are required to maintain labor and delivery services.

The hospital told NBC in a statement: ‘It seems no amount of money provided by the hospital board for the support of Labor and Delivery has been sufficient to maintain this service. 

‘We have supported, and would continue to support, Labor and Delivery if there was someone who could provide the service.’

Maternity units are not always profitable for hospitals. Roughly nine percent of Alabama’s residents have no health insurance, and almost half the births in the state are covered by Medicaid.

Reimbursements for Medicaid can be much lower than with private insurance plans.

Dr John Waits, CEO of the nonprofit Cahaba Medical Care, which runs medical clinics that take patients regardless of their ability to pay, told NBC: ‘Nobody wants women and children to do poorly, but you also can’t lose money year over year on a service line.’

He added: ‘There’s something broken about the funding stream that helps us take care of our women and children.’