Local officials have a plan for a birth center in Quincy, where midwives could deliver babies with backup from on-call doctors and a standby perinatal unit at the hospital, but state health officials have yet to approve it.
Declining birth rates, staffing shortages, and financial pressures have led 56 California hospitals - about 1 in 6 - to shutter maternity units over the past dozen years.
All they've essentially done is made it more dangerous to have a baby. People have to drive two hours now because a birth center can't open, so it's more dangerous.
Midwife-operated birth centers offer an alternative for women with low-risk pregnancies and can play a crucial role in filling the gap left by hospitals' retreat from obstetrics.
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