More than half of U.S. counties no longer have hospital-based labor and delivery services, according to a new report on maternity access released Tuesday by the March of Dimes, and in the counties where those units have closed, midwives are increasingly the clinicians families see.
The 2026 edition of the organization's Nowhere to Go report finds that more than 52 percent of counties lack hospital-based obstetric services, and that nearly 35 percent, roughly one in three, qualify as maternity care deserts, meaning they have neither birthing facilities nor obstetric clinicians.
