Demonstrators protest Valley Health plan to eliminate local maternity ward

Demonstrators want Valley Health to reconsider its plan to eliminate the labor and delivery unit from a new Warren Memorial Hospital. Photos/Roger Bianchini

FRONT ROYAL – Opponents of Valley Health’s plan to build a new Warren Memorial Hospital without a maternity ward to handle deliveries locally voiced their displeasure at the North Shenandoah Avenue entrances to the hospital on Wednesday, February 28. Protest co-organizers Michelle Matthiae and Melanie Salins said the demonstration was put together within two days working from a newly-formed Facebook group called “Save the Women’s Care Center at Warren Memorial Hospital”. Matthiae later informed Royal Examiner that the group had decided on the organizational name “Birth Local”.

The demonstration occurred from 11:30 a.m. to 1:30 p.m. and coincided with what was termed “a private luncheon” at which Valley Health officials would speak “to a select few of the community” about their plan for a new county hospital located off Leach Run Parkway. Organizers estimated a peak crowd of protesters numbering about 35 to 40, including about 15 children, a majority of the latter born at WMH. Organizers say their Facebook group membership has grown to over 1,000 within the two days preceding the Wednesday afternoon demonstration.

Between waving to passing motorists expressing support and helping keep track of the younger demonstrators Matthiae explained the impetus toward organizing against Valley Health’s plan to channel Warren County deliveries to Winchester Medical Center, some 23 miles from the current Warren Memorial Hospital on Front Royal’s northside.

“We’re out here because they’re closing our labor and delivery unit here – and it’s not just here, they’ve closed Luray and other surrounding counties and are funneling women to Winchester, which is an hour or more drive depending on where you live and might have to come down a mountain. So, what are you going to do in an emergency? And the solution was to have an ambulance, but what if that one ambulance is occupied?” Matthiae asks.

She pointed to a 2012 report of just such a circumstance where a woman in labor was having complications in a rural community where a maternity ward had been denied, in this case by the state health department, due to smaller community birth numbers. With just such a transport-by-ambulance to a distant facility plan in place – “The baby died,” Matthiae said, adding, “And we have many stories of women here, who if they had not made it to this hospital, their babies or they themselves would have died.”

Of the plan to handle such birthing emergencies in the new hospital’s Emergency Room, Matthiae wonders if that means an obstetrics physician will be on duty 24×7 or will they have to be called in, again creating a wait for specialized service situation.

Matthiae says as she has become involved in the issue locally, she has discovered that the Valley Health plan is indicative of a trend targeting rural areas nationally.

“We don’t want to cause a problem; we support the new hospital. But we just need to make sure that women’s rights are not stripped. And there is a trend in America that they are taking away rural hospital services and there’s been an increase of the maternal mortality rate of 64-percent; and infants are dying. So, this is not just our little town, but it’s finally affecting us and I think it’s time for us to say ‘STOP, we matter too,’ ” Matthiae says.

In a release by the group, Matthiae and co-organizer Salins wrote, “American women die in pregnancy or childbirth more than twice as often as in Canada. Even worse, the United States is one of only a few countries – including Zimbabwe and North Korea – where the (birth-related) mortality rate has risen since 1990. Is this our legacy?”

The “Birth Local” organizers are hopeful of meaningful dialogue with Valley Health officials, whom they noted have agreed to meet with them in the near future.