As maternity wards close, community outrage rises in key battleground states

OhioHealth is closing the maternity ward at Grady Memorial Hospital in Delaware County, Ohio, effective July thirty-first, removing the only place to give birth in this exurban county north of Columbus. Per The 19th, about seventy-four percent of births there are covered by Medicaid, whose reimbursement rates often don't fully cover obstetric costs—a challenge magnified by lower patient volumes. Pregnant patients will now face thirty-minute or longer drives to alternative facilities, and those from surrounding rural counties could face nearly an hour's travel. Nurses worry this could result in roadside deliveries and emergency visits without specialized care. This closure is part of a larger crisis: three hundred thirty-one rural hospitals stopped offering maternity services between twenty eleven and twenty twenty-four, leaving two point three million American women of childbearing age in counties with no place to give birth.

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