At the end of this month, an Idaho labor and delivery unit will shutter its doors. It's not exactly an anomaly; it's the third such closure in the state following the U.S. Supreme Court’s ruling in Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health, which triggered laws in the state that criminalize physicians who provide abortion care and make access to the procedure impossible.
As of April 1, 2024, West Valley Medical Center in Caldwell, Idaho, will no longer deliver infants. According to a statement on the hospital’s website, the closure was an outcome the institution “worked for years to avoid.” While West Valley Medical Center didn’t cite restrictive abortion laws as the reason for the closure, Dr. Kara Cadwallader, who is a family medicine physician in Idaho, told Salon in a phone interview that providers feel as if their “hands are tied” and they can’t do their jobs in a state where abortion is completely banned (with only a narrow exception in which an abortion is "necessary to prevent the death of the pregnant woman") and where physicians face jail time for providing a standard part of care.
