No OB-GYNs left in town: what came after Idaho’s assault on abortion
www.theguardian.com
In Sandpoint, Idaho, the maternity ward closed down. Within months, medical care for women in the rural community was hollowed out

Across Idaho, doctors are leaving, looking for states where politics don’t dictate how they practice medicine. The consequences of Idaho’s anti-choice laws hit Sandpoint fast and hard, hollowing out medical care for women within months. For years, the town had a maternity ward that delivered as many as 350 babies every year – now it has nothing. The OB-GYN ward shut down this spring and doctors have been fleeing the state in a steady stream, seeking shelter in places where their work doesn’t put them at risk of criminal charges or big lawsuits.

It’s become a gamble, getting pregnant and giving birth in a place that no longer has a maternity unit or any obstetricians. Sandpoint is small, fewer than 10,000 people, but it’s been a medical hub for a rural region of 50,000 in north Idaho, Montana and Washington.

For people like Sanders, pregnancy care in town is no longer an option. This is what happens when a state government that’s been itching to ban abortion enacts some of the most restrictive laws in the country and ensnares all of reproductive health and a good share of routine medical care in its dragnet. But the women of Sandpoint are clear about one thing they want others to know: this can happen anywhere in the post-Roe United States. Nowhere is as safe as you might believe and the battle won’t stop at state borders.

Idaho is one of several states that had trigger laws: immediate abortion restrictions that went into effect when Roe v Wade fell a year ago. In August of 2022, the state enacted a near-total ban on abortion with exceptions only if the mother’s life is in danger, or in the case of rape and incest. Those instances require a police report to be filed. The state also adopted what it called an “abortion trafficking” ban, which bars taking minors to other states for abortion care. Family members can sue doctors for thousands of dollars if they perform an abortion, and doctors may face criminal fines and even prison time.

Idaho also became the only state in the country to stop tracking maternal mortality rates. Activists say it’s like they don’t want anyone to know how deadly their decisions might be.

    • zane@kbin.social
      50·
      1 year ago

      Not saying that they aren’t getting what they deserve, but a lot of people here hate the political majority with a passion. Sucks for everyone who isn’t too stupid to know abortions are healthcare.

      • Pistcow@lemm.ee
        16·
        1 year ago

        I know a handful of people living across Idaho and they’re all drinking the Trump Kool-aid. Good, you get what you get.

    • Letstakealook@lemm.ee
      32·
      1 year ago

      Exactly. The whole area that obgyn clinic serviced is deep red. This is some real leopards ate my face news. Sucks to suck.

      • xuxebiko@kbin.social
        9·
        1 year ago

        The abrupt shift has created a climate of fear and anxiety, especially for women and families. Krista Haller, a therapist who specializes in working with pregnant people and new parents, says many have lost trust in their medical system.

        Yet they trust and support the political party that is the real culprit. Do they lack cause-effect awareness or did they think their face would be spared?

        • Letstakealook@lemm.ee
          3·
          1 year ago

          We all know it was the demoncrats and their cabal of crooked doctors and scientists that did this. 🙄

    • Agingtoofast@reddthat.comEnglish
      231·
      1 year ago

      Sometimes I struggle to feel compassion for the people dealing with the consequences of their voting (or lack thereof). Especially women who didn’t think this would happen to their rights and access to care.

      • xuxebiko@kbin.social
        15·
        1 year ago

        Especially women who didn’t think this would happen to their rights and access to care.

        who’ll think the real problem is that the wrong people are getting hurt.

    • Sonori@beehaw.orgEnglish
      4·
      1 year ago

      To note the obvious, nearly three hundred thousand of us voted against this, just as we have for years.

  • AutoTL;DR@lemmings.worldBEnglish
    18·
    1 year ago

    This is the best summary I could come up with:

    It’s a scene out of an American dream: a stretch of city beach buzzes with young families playing and laughing under the hot afternoon summer sun, moms chasing after children, splashing in the shallow ripples of Lake Pend Oreille.

    Lauren Sanders relaxes among the beachgoers in a sea-green bikini that reveals her pregnant belly, keeping an eye under her sun hat on her young daughter, Gwen, who’s angling to get back in the water.

    But if anything goes wrong – a last-minute emergency, a scare, an unpredicted turn - and she needs hospital maternity care, she’ll be put into an ambulance and driven over the two-lane highway to a larger city half an hour away.

    The OB-GYN ward shut down this spring and doctors have been fleeing the state in a steady stream, seeking shelter in places where their work doesn’t put them at risk of criminal charges or big lawsuits.

    The raft of extreme abortion laws left doctors like Huntsberger unsure if they could continue to practice any kind of family medicine in Idaho, where untrained political figures now have greater say over medical decisions than physicians.

    Along with its ramping up of abortion restrictions this year, the legislature enacted a law banned gender-affirming care for minors and the governor signed a strict “bathroom bill” mandating that restrooms and changing rooms be segregated by the gender a person is assigned at birth.

    The original article contains 2,285 words, the summary contains 233 words. Saved 90%. I’m a bot and I’m open source!

  • agegamon@beehaw.org
    14·
    1 year ago

    I highly recommend the This American Life episode on the subject (ep 792 - When To Leave). The episode takes place before the OB-GYN actually decides to leave Sandpoint, and brings some thoughts to the idea of why many families - including myself and some of my family - can no longer call these states like Idaho home. The return of theological hatred-is-the-point laws and governance in places like Idaho is just outright terrifying. They’re going to become (and in some ways already are) incompatible with modern, fair, and just human existence.

      • agegamon@beehaw.org
        5·
        1 year ago

        See, that’s the batshit insane thing about this whole situation: these conservatives are so brainwashed that they typically don’t care why people don’t want to be around them. They often view it as a good thing that they’re in fly-over states/counties. So long as reasonable people with brains (and all women, and all lgbtq+ people, and all pregnant people, and all non-christians, etc etc) are excluded or subjugated, they feel like they’ve “won.”