After Idaho’s strict abortion ban, OB-GYNs stage a quick exodus

SANDPOINT, Idaho — At a brewery in this northern Idaho city, hundreds of people recently held a wake of sorts to mourn the closure of Sandpoint’s only labor and delivery ward, collateral damage from the state’s Republican-led effort to criminalize nearly all abortions.

Jen Quintano, the event’s organizer and a Sandpoint resident who runs a tree service, called to the crowd, packed shoulder to shoulder as children ran underfoot, “Raise your hand if you were born at Bonner General! Raise your hand if you gave birth at Bonner General!” Nearly everyone raised their hand.

Later this month, the hospital, founded in 1949 near the shores of Lake Pend Oreille, will stop providing services for expectant mothers, forcing patients across northern Idaho to travel at least an additional hour for care. In June, a second Idaho hospital, Valor Health, in the rural city of Emmett, will also halt labor and delivery services.

Those decisions came within months of Idaho’s abortion ban, one of the nation’s strictest, going into effect in August 2022. Physicians can now perform the medical procedure only to stop the death of a pregnant woman or in the case of rape or incest reported to the police.

In March, Bonner General Health officials said the law was a driving force in the closure, noting Idaho’s legal and political climate.

“Highly respected, talented physicians are leaving,” the hospital wrote in a statement. “Recruiting replacements will be extraordinarily difficult. In addition, the Idaho Legislature continues to introduce and pass bills that criminalize physicians for medical care nationally recognized as the standard of care.”

OB-GYNs Face Dangerous Dilemmas

Amelia Huntsberger, an OB-GYN, has delivered babies and treated miscarriages at Bonner General for more than a decade. Soon after abortion became illegal here, she saw a patient with a ruptured ectopic pregnancy — where a fertilized egg grows outside the uterus — and faced a dangerous dilemma. The state law did not allow physicians to terminate ectopic pregnancies, which are never viable.

“I went to the emergency room and evaluated the patient,” Huntsberger said. “Her vital signs were stable at the time of my evaluation, but I knew based on her imaging we needed to move quickly to stabilize her.”

Huntsberger said her duty as a doctor was clear — to prioritize the safety of her patient — but added that she “also knew that I was putting myself potentially at risk of felony charges, which would have a minimum of two years in jail, [and] loss of my medical license for six months.”

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