Secular Pro-Life
  • Home
  • About
    • Meet The Team
    • Mission and Vision
    • Frequently Asked Questions
    • Stances
      • Abortion
      • Religion
      • Contraception
      • The Rape Exception
    • Terms and Conditions
      • Opt-out preferences
  • Content
    • Index
    • Blog
    • Presentations
      • A Secular Case Against Abortion
      • Building Bridges
      • Deconstructing Three Pro-Choice Myths
      • Overlooked Findings of the Turnaway Study
    • Research
      • Abortion Law and Abortion Rates
      • Abortion Law and Pregnancy Rates
      • Later Abortion
      • Embryonic Hearts
    • Collections
      • Becoming Pro-Life
      • They can hear you
      • Parents can hear you
      • Our children’s heartbeats
      • Ask An Atheist
      • LGBTQ and Pro-Life
      • Fixed that meme for you
      • For the biology textbook tells me so
    • Print Materials
      • 100 Pro-Life Sign Ideas
      • Overview of SPL
      • 3 Reasons to tell people you’re pro-life
      • How to talk (not fight) about abortion
      • Bridges PRC Curriculum
      • Fetal Remains Disposition Protocol
      • FAQ handout
      • Presentations overview card
    • Store
  • Contact
  • Get Involved
    • Why support SPL?
    • Donor Opportunities
    • Volunteer Opportunities
    • Volunteer Survey
    • More Surveys
      • Why do you support SPL?
      • Best and Worst Abortion Arguments
      • “Ask An Atheist” Interview
      • Non-Traditional Pro-Life Survey
      • LGBT Pro-Life Survey
      • Parents experiences with prenatal screening
      • Your experiences with adoption
      • Your experiences with processing abortion
  • Donate
  • Search
  • Menu Menu

Idaho hospital ends L&D services due to decreasing patient volumes; media blames abortion bans

March 22, 2023/in Legislation, laws, & court cases, Uncategorized /by Monica Snyder

Bonner General Health (BGH), a hospital in Sandpoint, Idaho, has announced it is ending it’s labor and delivery services. You may have seen headlines like these:

Sources: Today, Washington Post, Jezebel, The Hill, The Guardian, CBS

The Dobbs decision overturned Roe v. Wade, which had been around since 1973. That means legislatures across the country are grappling with changes to a decades-long legal status quo. It wouldn’t surprise me if there have been trigger laws written too ambiguously or opaquely, at least initially leading to miscommunications, confusion, and disruptions in medical care. To the extent that’s actually the case, legislators must fix those issues. Laws restricting abortion should be very clear and unambiguous, and should include strong exceptions for when a woman is in danger.

However, media narratives such as the headlines above, claiming catastrophic effects of abortion restrictions, are often at best incomplete and at worst transparently deceptive compared to the information actually available. The media coverage of BGH’s L&D closure suggests doctors are no longer working at the hospital because of abortion bans. But the hospital’s own press release paints a broader picture, stating multiple reasons for closing L&D.

The first reason they list is a loss of pediatricians:

Without pediatrician coverage to manage neonatal resuscitations and perinatal care, it is unsafe and unethical to offer routine Labor and Delivery services.

Pediatricians are not OBGYNs. The care they provide is exclusively for born children. Insufficient pediatrician coverage isn’t a result of abortion restrictions. But then why is it happening?

The press release cites a second reason which may explain: decreasing patient volumes and changing demographics.

The number of deliveries at BGH has continued to decrease yearly. … There are many reasons, including a nationwide decrease in births [and] an older population moving to Bonner County.

Idaho’s abortion restriction didn’t go into effect until the second half of last year, and the state’s Supreme Court didn’t uphold them until a a couple months ago. But BGH has been seeing decreasing patient volumes for years. Sandpoint, Idaho has only 9,000 residents, and they are increasingly an older population. The hospital didn’t have enough patients to afford the L&D department.

Note, too, they listed a third reason for decreasing patient volumes:

Kootenai Health [has] a new, updated unit with Neonatologists and OBs in-house 24/7.

Kootenai Health is the hospital in Coeur d’Alene, Idaho, a city about an hour south of Sandpoint with a population of 56,000. According to BGH, residents of Sandpoint are choosing to deliver at Kootenai Health over BGH because it has a better staffed, more updated L&D unit. If doctors are “fleeing” Idaho due to abortion laws, why isn’t Kootenai Health’s L&D unit struggling to stay open?

Despite BGH discussing multiple more pressing reasons for closing its L&D unit, note only one of the headlines above even mentions any reason other than abortion bans.

Still, after discussing lack of pediatricians and lack of patients, BGH’s press release does go on to list Idaho’s legal and political climate as a reason for closing L&D. The media coverage often quotes the hospital as saying physicians are leaving and recruiting replacements is difficult because of Idaho’s abortion laws. But note the way BGH actually worded this section (emphasis added):

Highly respected, talented physicians are leaving. Recruiting replacements will be extraordinarily difficult. In addition, the Idaho legislature continues to introduce and pass bills that criminalize physicians for medical care…

Physicians are leaving BGH and are difficult to replace largely because of low patient census in Bonner County. BGH lists the political climate as a supplemental reason, after the primary reasons.

But BGH does list the political climate as a factor. Idaho’s anti-abortion legislators have already been working to clarify the parameters around which abortion is restricted.

Around the same time BGH gave their press release, legislators introduced an amendment to the state’s abortion law which was crafted with input from the Idaho medical association. The changes are designed to make abundantly clear what is and isn’t legally considered an abortion in Idaho:

Those new changes define what is not an abortion. They include the removal of a dead unborn child, the removal of an ectopic pregnancy, and the treatment of a woman who is no longer pregnant.

The amendment also changes the life-threatening clause, it states: “if a physician has reasonable judgment that an abortion was necessary to treat a physical condition of a woman that if left untreated would be life-threatening.”

The amendment’s sponsor states the amendment “clarifies that the woman’s life is also very important to us and that if it’s a life-threatening situation, then the physician has the ability to make a determination.”

@secular_pro_life

#greenscreen A town with an aging population of only 9000 people didn’t have enough patients for its own L&D unit, but the media wants this to be about abortion bans. #abortion #abortiondebate #abortionbans #idaho #abortion #abortiondebate #secularprolife #citeyoursources

♬ original sound – SPL

Related Posts

Tags: debunking, media bias
Share this entry
  • Share on Facebook
  • Share on Twitter
  • Share on Pinterest
  • Share on LinkedIn
  • Share on Reddit
  • Share by Mail
https://i0.wp.com/secularprolife.org/wp-content/uploads/2023/03/2023-03-22_103357.jpg?fit=500%2C1045&ssl=1 1045 500 Monica Snyder https://secularprolife.org/wp-content/uploads/2021/10/SecularProlife2.png Monica Snyder2023-03-22 12:14:432025-01-19 19:02:08Idaho hospital ends L&D services due to decreasing patient volumes; media blames abortion bans
You might also like
Did Texas’ Heartbeat Law increase infant mortality rates?
Yes, Virginia, there is media bias
More evidence that most late-term abortions are elective
Deluded Portland woman wins abortion advocates’ hearts in the strangest possible way
Kat Cammack and Florida’s abortion law
Controversy around Abortion Pill Reversal: a quick overview
Opponents of heartbeat bills don’t understand how ultrasounds work
Precision of Language, Please, New York Times

Follow via Email

* indicates required

Categories

  • Ableism
  • Abortion pills
  • Administrative
  • Adoption & Foster Care
  • Biology
  • Bodily Rights
  • Dialogue strategy
  • en español
  • Later Abortion
  • Legislation, laws, & court cases
  • Miscarriage & Pregnancy Loss
  • Personhood
  • Philosophy
  • Pro-Life Demographics
  • Rape Exception
  • Religion
  • Research
  • Speeches, Discussions, Presentations
  • SPL Emails
  • They Can Hear You
  • Top SPL Articles
  • Top SPL Graphics
  • Uncategorized
  • We Asked You Answered
  • Year In Review
  • Your Stories

Archive

It’s crucial that we demonstrate that anyone can–and everyone should–oppose abortion. Thanks to you, we are working to change minds, transform our culture, and protect our prenatal children. Every donation supports our ability to provide nonsectarian, nonpartisan arguments against abortion. Read more details here. Please donate today.

DONATE
SUBSCRIBE
© Copyright 2025 Secular Pro-Life. All rights reserved. Website Design by TandarichGroup

Related Posts

Heidi Crowter and the Deathly Laws The exterior of an Orlando, FL abortion center Florida Enforces its 24-Hour Waiting Period. Somehow That’s News.
Scroll to top
Manage Consent

To provide the best experience, we use technologies like cookies to store and/or access device information. Consenting to these technologies will allow us to process data such as browsing behavior or unique IDs on this site. Not consenting or withdrawing consent may adversely affect certain features and functions.

Functional Always active
The technical storage or access is strictly necessary for the legitimate purpose of enabling the use of a specific service explicitly requested by the subscriber or user, or for the sole purpose of carrying out the transmission of a communication over an electronic communications network.
Preferences
The technical storage or access is necessary for the legitimate purpose of storing preferences that are not requested by the subscriber or user.
Statistics
The technical storage or access that is used exclusively for statistical purposes. The technical storage or access that is used exclusively for anonymous statistical purposes. Without a subpoena, voluntary compliance on the part of your Internet Service Provider, or additional records from a third party, information stored or retrieved for this purpose alone cannot usually be used to identify you.
Marketing
The technical storage or access is required to create user profiles to send advertising, or to track the user on a website or across several websites for similar marketing purposes.
Manage options Manage services Manage {vendor_count} vendors Read more about these purposes
View preferences
{title} {title} {title}

Subscribe for Livestream Updates and More

* indicates required

Interests

Want to receive our email newsletter?

We’d be happy to keep in touch. Subscribe for access to our newsletter and other updates.