As a reporter, occasionally I find story leads in odd places, so literally walking into this discovery some weeks ago left me quite pleased.
After completing a shift scooping ice cream in Stowe, my double life, as some readers and area ice cream lovers have discovered, I ran into some lovely ladies while picking up my post-shift meal.
They had a table set up, with information and handouts, promoting the “Green Mountain Birthing Center.”
I am very pleased to have the opportunity to share that the talented and dedicated staffers of the Copley Hospital Birthing Center, as well as many other organizers and contributors, have continued their efforts to provide maternal healthcare after the center’s closure this past November.
The ladies running the information table had no way of knowing I was a reporter, moreover that I had been covering the potential and eventual closure of the Copley Birthing Center since the news became public information. A young woman just starting my reporting career, this story meant a great deal to me, and still does.
This story unveiled just how entrenched the patriarchy is in our society and structures. To remove the birthing center from Copley Hospital forces women in the Northeast Kingdom into commutes of up to, and exceeding, an hour. Through my investigation and reporting, I learned the government does not consider birth and maternal care as essential care when doling out federal funds for rural hospitals like Copley or Brattleboro Memorial.
And here I thought we lived in the future, where gender discrimination was illegal under federal law.
This issue of shrinking maternal care is not unique to our area, as the Brattleboro Memorial Hospital has recently announced plans to close their birthing center as well. Springfield Hospital’s birthing center closed in 2019. The next closest hospitals with birthing services are Cheshire Medical Center in Keene, N.H., and Baystate Franklin Medical Center in Greenfield, Mass.
As confirmed by experts and center nurses, the increased travel time will no doubt lead to an escalation in complications for both women and babies during labor and delivery.
Their respective boards of trustees knew this, and in my opinion, decided women’s healthcare wasn’t worth the effort or money.
Despite months of outcry and push-back, the burden was largely placed on area women and patients to find an alternative.
Luckily, the dedicated former Copley center staff and other midwife experts have begun to lead the charge.
Green Mountain Birth Center Inc. will be a nonprofit healthcare facility located in Waterbury. As a freestanding, non-hospital birth center licensed by the Vermont Department of Public Health, they hope to provide families with a safe, accessible and community-based option for maternity care. They plan to accept most private insurances as well as Green Mountain Care (Vermont Medicaid).
Currently, rural Vermonters must choose between hospital birth or home birth. I hope that Green Mountain Birth Center will fill this gap by offering a third choice.
Women’s healthcare is essential healthcare, despite how the government categorizes it, yet we are always first up on the chopping block, as seen with center closures around our state.
Simone de Beauvoir, in her 1949 classic work ‘The Second Sex’, states “humanity is male and man defines woman not in herself but as relative to him; she is not regarded as an autonomous being.”
The disparities in women’s healthcare in this day and age, to me, exemplify this statement. Our healthcare is considered separate, othered, and holds less value thus allowing for trustee boards to easily discard their centers and the essential work they do.
We are half of the population, half of society, create the other half of society, and we are awarded with a half-existence being normalized as the “other,” and socialized to accept this fate.
I commend the brave center staffers of Copley, Brattleboro Memorial and Springfield Hospital, and all others, who have continued to fight for the agency and care of rural women as maternity care deserts continue to grow in this little state.
