Lawmakers on Monday responded to a North Idaho hospital’s decision to stop providing labor and delivery services, citing staffing shortage and Idaho's political climate.
Pregnant women in North Idaho will soon have fewer options for healthcare, with the only hospital in Sandpoint ending its obstetrical services.
Bonner General Health’s board of directors and senior leadership announced in a press release Friday that it was an emotional and difficult decision to soon stop providing obstetrical services.
Last year, the hospital said it delivered 265 babies. Starting May 19 and possibly sooner - depending on staffing - women will have to seek OB care more than 40 miles farther away, according to the hospital.
Rep. Mark Sauter, R-Sandpoint, said he's "troubled by the problems occurring in Sandpoint," and said "when our medical professionals and health care system have problems, our community members suffer."
He said their emergency medical service providers will be even more critical.
House Minority Leader Ilana Rubel, D-Boise, said the news is "absolutely horrifying," but not surprising.
"We Democrats raised the alarm every which way we could and said there's no health exception in this, you're going to criminalize doctors and put them in an impossible situation for trying to save women's lives, and they did not care. They passed the bill as it was. We knew eventually doctors were going to be leaving the state and women's health was going to be in danger, and it has come to fruition," Rep. Rubel said. "I think the message sent by this legislature to women all over the state is a very frightening one... The sponsor was asked on the floor when this bill passed, again back in 2020, what about women's health, what about their futures, doesn't that matter? And he said, not as much as the fetus."
Bonner General cited other reasons beyond the legislature’s control, including a decrease in births at the hospital and changing demographics.
However, it pointed to Idaho lawmakers who continue to introduce and pass bills that criminalize physicians for medical care nationally recognized as the standard of care, as part of the problem.
Idaho has among the strictest abortion bans in the entire country. Under the state's current abortion statutes, doctors could face lawsuits, fines, and even jail time for providing certain care.
The hospital officials said highly respected and talented physicians are leaving Idaho, and that recruiting replacements will be "extraordinarily difficult."
"As of this time last year, I believe, Idaho had nine fetal maternal medicine specialists who were the high risk care people. We've lost three of those in the last couple months, so we've lost one third of our coverage for high risk pregnancies for fetal maternal medicine specialists. We can't fill our medical residencies, for the first time in Idaho history. We are losing OBGYNs. We are losing neonatologists," Rubel said. "Doctors are fleeing the state and no doctors want to come here right now."
The hospital's decision comes as Republican lawmakers introduced a bill Monday that they say would clear up some confusion for doctors when it comes to Idaho's criminal abortion ban. Some of the changes include adding what is not an abortion. Under the bill, an abortion would not include a the removal of a dead unborn child, the removal of an ectopic pregnancy, or the treatment of a woman who is no longer pregnant. It would also change the life-threatening clause, to read: "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."
"This is a clean up of the trigger law that many of us remember well. We're making sure that there are no unintended consequences related to the law," House Majority Leader Megan Blanksma, R-Hammett, said introducing her bill in House State Affairs committee Monday morning.
Rep. Sauter said he hadn't yet read the new bill, but said he looks forward to the public hearing on it Tuesday.
He said, "I hope it begins to address some of the issues our medical community is facing."
But Democrats don't think it'll make much of a difference.
"Not only does this still not put in an exception to cover women's health, but the legislature is still litigating. They're still paying an out of state attorney $500 per hour to try to overturn the only protection we currently have for women's health, which is a federal court order," Rubel said. "This is what they're calling a fix, but I don't believe this legislature will ever deliver a real fix for women's health. It may be that the people of Idaho take it on themselves. I don't know, maybe this is something that just has to be done through a ballot initiative."
Blaksma told CBS2 she didn't have enough information to comment on the hospital's announcement.
CBS2 reached out to the other two lawmakers in the hospital's district but have yet to hear back.
Sandpoint Women’s Health will no longer accept new obstetrics patients, but it said it has offered a referral list to patients. Bonner General said it will work to coordinate care for OB patients scheduled to deliver in May or after.