A rural hospital in northern Idaho will stop delivering babies or providing other obstetrical care, citing a shifting legal climate in which recently enacted state laws could subject physicians to prosecution for providing abortions, among other reasons.
Bonner General Health in Sandpoint will discontinue obstetrical services in mid-May. It also cited a decreasing number of deliveries and a loss of doctors among other factors in its decision.
Those pregnant in the city of about 9,000 — with an average annual snowfall of about 60 inches — will most likely have to travel about 45 miles to Coeur d’Alene for care, or to hospitals farther away in Idaho, Washington and Montana. The decision to discontinue providing obstetrical services was emotional and difficult, hospital officials said in a news release.
“We have made every effort to avoid eliminating these services,” Ford Elsaesser, Bonner General Health’s Board president, said in the release. “We hoped to be the exception, but our challenges are impossible to overcome now.”The numbers of deliveries had been declining for years with 265 births recorded at the hospital in 2022, the statement said. Births also have been decreasing nationally and older people have been moving into the Sandpoint area, officials said.
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