When fewer than half of rural hospitals offer labor and delivery services, what does that mean for rural pregnancies and deliveries? It means less prenatal, postnatal, and postpartum care – and more risk – for moms and babies, Anna Thompson Hajdik writes in an opinion piece for The Daily Yonder. The reasons we got here are complex, but there are solutions to consider. Here's a gently edited version:

"The accelerated closure of rural hospitals has touched every part of the country, and even if the hospitals themselves stay open because of a Critical Access designation, their labor and delivery units are disappearing. Multiple media outlets have reported on the dire situation. Families driving over four hours in blizzard conditions in the middle of the night because their local hospital ceased delivering babies 18 months earlier. A mom in rural Illinois was forced to deliver a baby on an Interstate 55 off-ramp a month after the labor and delivery unit in the small town of Lincoln, Illinois, closed. A soon-to-be mom in labor who navigated an isolated mountain pass in rural Washington on her way to the hospital with barely enough gas to get there.

At the same time, maternal mortality rates across the United States have increased significantly. In 2021, the rate of maternal deaths that occurred while pregnant or within 42 days of being pregnant was 32.9 per 100,000 live births, 10 times the rate for countries of comparable high income. The proliferation of "maternity care deserts" in rural America is an adjacent issue to overall maternal mortality; the March of Dimes defines maternity deserts as counties where there are no hospitals providing obstetric care, no birth centers, no ob/gyn and no certified nurse midwives.

Read the full article about rural maternity care by Heather Close at The Rural Blog.