Women’s Health Center themed handouts at the opening ceremony.
Cumberland, in Allegany County, is beautiful – rural and relatively isolated, nestled in the foothills of the Appalachians. I practiced here for 25 years and still live here. Allegany is also one of the least healthy counties in Maryland, place 21 of 24. We are relatively poor and there is almost no public transport. It was difficult to access specialized care.
The new Women’s Health Center of Maryland held its ribbon cutting this week. It promises to bring a much-needed array of services to the region, including abortion. The clinic is being launched by the staff of the Women’s Health Center of West Virginia, which was forced to stop performing abortions in West Virginia following a near-total ban on abortion there. The decision to move abortion services to western Maryland was highly strategic: the clinic is located south of Cumberland, a few miles from Keyser, West Virginia. It will fill an abortion desert, serving women from our state, southwestern Pennsylvania and Ohio, who are now also restricting women’s access to care. The clinic notes that it will offer a phased approach to gradually expand services, starting with medical and surgical abortions, birth control, and STI testing and treatment. They will soon add breast and cervical cancer screening and gender-confirming hormone therapy.
In the first 100 days after June 24, 2022, Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health Organization overturn decision Roo to Wade, The Guttmacher Institute thought so at least 66 clinics in 15 states they stopped performing abortions. Now, “22 million women and girls of childbearing age in the U.S. now live in states where access to abortion is severely restricted and often totally inaccessible,” according to Human rights guard.
Even with MD Governor Moore declaring Maryland a “safe haven” for those seeking abortions, women have not had an easy time here. While Maryland will pass a constitutional amendment enshrining the right to abortion next year, our local representatives are resisting this — even allowing their voters to vote. (However, McKay is also known for wanting a voice in the Western counties secede from Maryland and join West Virginia). State Senator Mike McKay is fervently anti-choice; he and local commissioners have resisted known to the clinic. There were about a dozen male protesters lined the side of the road holding signs and sometimes shouting. The clinic was well prepared for this and there was no inconvenience.
On the other hand, Rep. David Trone passionately in cutting the ribbon on our need to vote in the face of the Supreme Court’s shift to the right. He stressed that “abortion rights are human rights”.
Celebrating the New Women’s Health Clinic of Maryland – Cresta Kowalski, Rep. Trone, Kaylen Barker, … [+]
The president of Mountain Maryland Alliance for Reproductive Freedom, a nonpartisan, grassroots group of people from Allegany and Garrett counties. Cresta Kowalski, said: “This day is a holiday. The Women’s Health Center of Maryland will be a beacon of hope and light to people who have lived in darkness for far too long.
She shed tears as she noted that the LGBTQIA+ community, including her child, will now have “opportunities to receive gender-affirming healthcare from professionals in a non-judgmental and compassionate manner. They will no longer lack care, in the darkness, but will have a place of hope and dignity in our rural community.”
Perspective of the doctor
As a practicing physician, because of aggressive protesters in Hagerstown, I favored referring women to Baltimore clinics for safe abortions. But that’s a few hours away, and the Hagerstown clinic, with its more limited services, is nearly 70 miles away and is very difficult for poor women without a car.
As a physician, I have cared for women who had serious infections from a botched abortion. I am also aware of women who have been forced to carry and deliver fetuses with fatal abnormalities (e.g., anencephaly, where part of the skull and brain are missing) because local hospitals refused to allow a late termination of pregnancy.
A few years ago, I strongly opposed the merger of the two local hospitals, Sacred Heart Hospital and Memorial Hospital, because it would place all health care in Western Maryland under the restrictions of the Catholic Church, with no accessible options. The proposed merger would have banned not only abortions, but also vital contraceptives, tubal ligation, the administration of Depot Provera (a long-acting contraceptive), and the distribution of condoms, as well as affecting end-of-life care. (The ban on tubals would have forced women out of town and a 2nd anesthesia and postpartum surgery). Counseling about HIV and STI prevention would be prohibited. Due to the need for female study participants to use effective birth control, many clinical trials of new drugs would be banned, severely limiting patients’ access to advanced care.
Wayne Goldner, MD, a retired abortion provider I’ve known for decades, applauded the decision to open a full-service women’s reproductive health clinic in Cumberland. He reiterated that “making abortion illegal or difficult to obtain does not reduce abortions, but increases morbidity and mortality.
Women will have abortions no matter what the law says.” These restrictions “have hurt the poor, singles and minorities the most”. And, Goldner stressed, we must not forget that such clinics save women’s lives every day.
For decades, I’ve believed that health care decisions should be a medical decision between a patient and their doctor, not dictated by someone else’s personal or religious beliefs. It’s great to see this blossoming in Maryland, especially in our relatively depressed and isolated rural area.
