In the four years since the Supreme Court overturned Roe v. Wade, prompting a near-total ban on Idaho abortions, more than a third of the state’s obstetrician-gynecologists have left, closed their offices, stopped practicing obstetrics or retired. Now half of Idaho’s counties don’t have an OB-GYN. There are just 170 obstetricians in the state today — less than two for every 10,000 women there. (Nationally, it’s about twice that.)
Three rural hospitals have closed their labor and delivery wards because they don’t have enough doctors. The wait time for a hysterectomy, even in more populated areas like Boise, can be six months. For an annual exam, it’s more like nine months. And if women face life-threatening complications during childbirth or a miscarriage, they’re increasingly flown out of state for treatment that OB-GYNs in Idaho could be jailed for administering.
The result? It’s now more dangerous to be pregnant in Idaho. My colleague Lisa Lerer spent a year interviewing doctors, public health officials, patients and reproductive rights activists across the state to learn how doctors are coping. “In a way, they are like pioneer doctors, working at the frontier of a new America where abortion laws limit the care they can offer,” Lisa writes. That could change this year. A referendum on the ballot would restore abortion rights until what’s called “fetal viability,” which was the standard that Roe set. But the loss of all those doctors will be felt for years.
Source: New York Times Top Stories · Summarized by HeadlinesBriefing