In Idaho, Extremists Have Created a Culture of Fear Around Pregnancy
Sandpoint, the picturesque North Idaho town situated next to the largest of the region’s famed mountain lakes, has been in the news a lot this year. The maternity ward at its local hospital, Bonner General Health, shut down in May. Hospital administrators cited a number of factors, the “legal and political climate” being one.
It was the first labor and delivery ward in the state to shut down, and another quickly followed.
Last year, shortly before Idaho’s abortion bans went into effect, Hannah Vollmer had an ectopic pregnancy and had to have emergency surgery to treat it. She and her husband have lived in Sandpoint for nine years and are local business owners.
“My husband was actually really nervous about me talking about it publicly, because you never know what people’s beliefs are,” she said.
Soon after her ectopic pregnancy, Vollmer managed to get pregnant again. She was about a month away from her due date when Bonner General stopped delivering babies. Rumors of the closure had spread through town before the public announcement because a Bonner General nurse posted about it on Facebook. Even after the official announcement, no one could give Vollmer a straight answer as to when the shutdown would actually happen.
Vollmer had a cerclage, a procedure where the cervix is stitched shut to help prevent preterm birth. The stitches were removed, and she was told to prepare for the fact that she could go into labor at any time. This plunged her into an anxious race against time in the last few weeks of her pregnancy.
“I had to beg to get into a doctor down in Coeur d’Alene,” she said. That’s about an hour south of Sandpoint—without traffic.
Ultimately, she chose to have labor induced after several weeks of driving back and forth for doctor’s appointments, facing the prospect of an hour or more in the car while in labor. The closure forced Vollmer to make choices she otherwise wouldn’t have. Still, she said, she feels lucky. She didn’t have other kids who needed care during that time. She didn’t live in the even more rural communities north and east of Sandpoint.
Every OB-GYN who used to practice in Sandpoint has left. Just a few nurse practitioners and one nurse midwife, who commutes up once a week from Coeur d’Alene, serve as the area’s sole reproductive health-care providers. That has consequences for people at all stages of life. And local organizer Alicia Abbott—who herself was born in the now-shuttered labor and delivery ward at Bonner General—said “anti-medicine, anti-science” policies could one day lead the hospital to close entirely.
“I worry for the future. I worry about losing hospitals and seeing that vacuum being filled by professionals who have faith-based practices, because we are a faith healing state,” she said, referring to an exemption in Idaho law allowing parents to legally withhold lifesaving medical treatment from their children in favor of faith-based healing practices.
Jen Jackson Quintano, who owns an arborist business with her husband and is also the founder of the Pro-Voice Project, echoed concerns about the hospital’s future. Health care “is a house of cards no matter where you are in the rural West,” she said. “But our house of cards was standing. Our doctors were willing to make sacrifices to work here because Sandpoint is worth it. And then suddenly it was no longer tenable.”
Quintano’s daughter, who is almost nine years old, was also born at Bonner General. Quintano had initially planned to give birth at home with a midwife, but the baby “got stuck on her way out. We were living over half an hour outside of town, so we had to drive to the hospital, and I had a c-section,” she said. “And gosh, I think often about, what if that had happened today?”
Quintano founded the Pro-Voice Project to get community members talking about abortion through events modeled on the Vagina Monologues. Her own abortion, she said, was a “blessing” that saved her from an abusive relationship. Community members often go out of their way to thank her for her work and share their own abortion stories.
But Idaho’s 2021 No Public Funds for Abortion Act, which is currently being challenged by the ACLU and prohibits the use of public funds for any purpose that could be construed as “promoting” abortion, has pulled the rug out from underneath Quintano’s events multiple times, resulting in the loss of venues and grant funding. And some would-be attendees worry for their safety.
“I’ve had people tell me they would like to come to my events, but they don’t because they’re so fearful of what might happen,” she said.