These remarks were offered as public testimony to the Massachusetts Department of Public Health.
On Wednesday, July 20, 2022, the Massachusetts Department of Public Health held a public hearing on the proposed closure of the North Shore Birth Center at Beverly Hospital by Beth Israel Lahey Health. More than forty members of the public—including several Massachusetts state representatives and senators, the Mayors of both Beverly and Lynn; dozens of former, current, and prospective patients including the first woman to ever birth her baby at the facility—offered public comment for over four hours in opposition to Beverly Hospital’s hasty decision to close the only freestanding birth center in Eastern Massachusetts.
Below are my remarks to Commissioner Margret R. Cooke, the attending representatives of the Mass. DPH, as well as Beverly Hospital President Tom Sands.
Good evening and thank you for allowing me to offer public comment before the DPH tonight in deep opposition to the closure of the North Shore Birth Center. My name is Keiko Zoll and I am a resident of Swampscott. I speak tonight as a mother after infertility, a reproductive justice advocate, and founder of the grassroots group, Swampscott for Roe v. Wade. I invite everyone here to learn more about our work at http://swampscott4roevwade.com.
The ironic timing of the closure of a 42-year-old birth center on the heels of the Supreme Court’s overturning of Roe v. Wade—a 49-year old law of the land protecting reproductive health access—is not lost on me, nor should it be lost on Beth Israel Lahey Health leadership or DPH, either.
While an abortion rights organizer and activist may seem like an unlikely ally in the fight to save the North Shore Birth Center—the ONLY freestanding birth center in Eastern Massachusetts—abortion care is as much a critical aspect of maternal and fetal medicine as labor and delivery. The closure of a birth center is an act of reproductive injustice. Let me say that again: the closure of OUR birth center is an act of reproductive injustice.
When Governor Charlie Baker signed Executive Order 600, “Protecting Access to Reproductive Health Care Services in the Commonwealth,” Massachusetts became a safe harbor state for any patient seeking safe, legal abortion care from within or outside of our state.
As of this moment, abortion care is now illegal in 10 states*, with an additional 13 states ready to ban abortions in the coming weeks. And it is one of these 10 states where abortion is now banned, Texas, at which we must look to see the disastrous and likely unconsidered implications of closing our North Shore Birth Center.
According to a July 3rd Boston Globe article, “Texas is at the leading edge of what doctors fear will be a wave of more complicated pregnancies and sicker patients in the wake of the high court’s decision.” The article continues: “some [Texas] providers are being forced to send patients out of state to receive care for complications that would have been handled locally before, including labor that begins before a fetus can survive outside the womb.“
Dr. Emily Herzberg, pediatrician with the Division of Neonatology and Newborn Medicine at Mass General for Children, told the Globe that people with medically complex pregnancies may come to Massachusetts to receive care in a place where abortion is one of the options discussed. She continued: “We get referrals from outside communities and outside states already. I do anticipate we may have an increased number.”
If President Sands is worried about how a national workforce shortage is impacting his hospital, then he should consider the remarks Dr. Erika Werner, OBGYN chief at Tufts Medical Center and Medical School who told the Globe: “There absolutely will be more complicated pregnancies across the United States.” No hospital or healthcare facility in Massachusetts—Beverly Hospital included—will not be immune from this increase in urgent patient need as more states ban abortion.
While our birth center provides care to the North Shore and Cape Ann, and as the hospital’s own chief nursing officer noted tonight, Beverly Hospital is “committed to the diverse needs of our community”—and as Rep. Belsito reiterated that Beverly Hospital is a community hospital—it is not enough to be thinking of and serving our local community in this frightening and regressive eradication of reproductive healthcare access in our nation.
With Gov. Baker’s executive order that Massachusetts is now a safe harbor for safe, legal abortion care seekers and providers, it is incumbent for all hospitals and medical practices in the Commonwealth to open their doors to out-of-state patients seeking the abortion care they need and deserve and to those providers who can no longer practice in their own states.
With a coming wave of out-of-state patients with complicated pregnancies, it is in Beth Israel Lahey’s and Beverly Hospital‘s best interests to welcome BOTH out-of-state high-risk patients AND abortion providers—who are licensed medical providers—to their healthcare facilities, particularly for their financial interests, as President Sands stated this evening that Beverly Hospital has been “considering its strategic short- and long-term investments” and ongoing medical provider staffing issues. Pregnant people with low-risk and uncomplicated pregnancies could receive care at the North Shore Birth Center, freeing up these necessary and soon-to-be urgently needed beds for higher risk, complicated pregnancies and births. Out-of-state abortion providers—who specialize in reproductive health—could ameliorate Beverly Hospital’s current staffing demands.
By closing the Birth Center, Beverly Hospital is not only non-compliant with the spirit of Governor Baker’s executive order, their decision flies in the face of it and does an injustice to all pregnant and birthing people who seek the care they need and deserve.
In closing, I urge you, Commissioner Cooke and President Sands, to halt the closure of this necessary birth center space in the name of reproductive and healthcare justice. Beth Israel Lahey Health and Beverly Hospital could be an exemplary, national model for equitable healthcare delivery in this critical moment for reproductive healthcare access. The North Shore Birth Center must remain open and fully operational to preserve access as an essential health service and to do what is right and just for all.