BANGOR, Maine — All the reasons people in this rural region seek reproductive care — and the barriers they must overcome in accessing it — were on full display from the moment the first patient stepped into this clinic nestled amid towering evergreens.
Mabel Wadsworth Center is an island of integrated care in this rural community, where state reports show there is one primary care physician for every 1,300 residents and one psychiatrist for every 14,000. Its mission is to provide full-spectrum reproductive care, telegraphed by the art lining the walls: colorful renderings of uteruses and vaginas and black-and-white images of the bellies of women who have given birth, had miscarriages, abortions and stillbirths.
Amid disappearing maternity wards as rural hospitals struggle to stay afloat, some experts view more fully integrating reproductive care into primary medicine as a way to expand care and improve patient outcomes. “What I had been told, or what I had seen, was only OB-GYNs or nurse-midwives really provide this type of care, then I went to medical school and my world was totally opened up in realizing that family doctors are providing this care all across the country,” Lee said, stressing that she was speaking from her professional experience and not on behalf of her institution.
A small group of “antis” regularly pickets the clinic, where patients spoke on the condition of anonymity out of concern for their safety. Many of the small-town family medicine doctors who work on “clinic days” when abortions are performed travel from more than 75 miles away and don’t broadcast their work at Mabel Wadsworth in their home communities, which are more conservative than Bangor. Here, storefront window displays in downtown show support for abortion rights.
The study said rural communities with more African American and low-income families have suffered more rapid loss of maternity wards than have other rural communities. More than half of the nation’s Black population lives in the South, which experienced “If you’re going to be treating women and doing gynecological care, you can’t dismiss women,” she said, describing her struggles while waiting to be seen. The high school graduate who works two jobs said one doctor told her, “‘You’re just not managing your anxiety.’ ”
Stix Nix Dix Dox
Well, one thing is certain... if you murder a baby you are definitely stealing a life. You need to stop the lies, and the political bullshit WP. It's really disgusting. I can't believe that a so-called 'news' org would be allowed to just lie like this?
Democrats have no intention to do a thing about abortion. They need the pink hats to get mad about it again in 2024.
Abortion kills lives, not the euphemistic 'reproduction care' that is the ability to kill your baby up to 28 days after birth.
We’ve got another crisis. Add it to the list of them the Dims can tell you they’ll fix and then do nothing about once they get your vote.
Just blood on the gop hands!
Rural RED maga america has chosen to kill themselves and make women suffer for something men jack off into a toilet every day and women bleed out every month. It's as simple as that. We get what we ask for and sometimes what we deserve.
'Preacher knows best' mindset has horrible consequences.
'In rural America, the crisis of disappearing reproductive care steals lives' WOW! Even for WAPO that headline is BAD.