Erin McKay is expecting her first child on July 20. She originally reached out to many OBGYNs in Lane for a birth plan, but their care was not what she was looking for. McKay experienced staffing issues with other birthing centers, which were too full and didn’t have the space for more patients.
“I was with Pacific Women’s Center and just wasn’t feeling like it was as personable as I was hoping,” she said.
Then, she found McKenzie Midwives — a service that provided a more personalized approach to prenatal and childbirth services that also had more availability for her. McKay eventually finalized her birth plan with the midwives after looking at other options in her community, she said.
“Having a birth in a hospital with a midwife instead of having to stirrup up was really important to me,” she said.
But on April 18, McKenzie Midwives & Lactation Services announced it would close after three years of service, leaving McKay and many other mothers-to-be scrambling to find new birth plans on a strict deadline.
The clinic, in a public statement to patients and employees, said the closure will go into effect on July 7. However, the end of birthing services goes into effect on May 12, according to the front desk of the McKenzie Midwives Center. Postpartum care will no longer be of service on July 7.
This closing not only affects the midwives who have been let go, but the 80 patients who receive maternity care and their families who have birth plans with McKenzie Midwives as well, Lane County Commissioner Laurie Trieger said.
The notification of closure gave patients less than a month to find other birthing services. The midwives were notified on April 7, giving them three months to find other employment.
McKenzie-Willamette Medical Center wrote in a statement that, with approximately 10 births per month and six midwives, the clinic was no longer sustainable.
The private, for-profit hospital is owned by Quorum Health, a corporation based in Tennessee. Quorum recently filed for bankruptcy in 2020, in an effort to reduce its debts by $500 million.
Midwife care has historically cost less for patients and hospitals due to lowered risks of cesarean-section (C-section) deliveries, reduced health risks and shorter maternal stays in hospitals, according to a 2017 study published in the National Library of Medicine.
On April 25, supporters of McKenzie Midwives spoke in front of the Lane County Board of Commissioners to share their opinions on the closure. That morning, the room was full of pregnant women, children, families, midwives, doctors and some emotional testimonies.
Katie Sontag told commissioners she gave birth with the help of McKenzie midwives in December 2021, even with certain health complications during her pregnancy.
“I don’t know what I would have done without them,” Sontag said through tears. “I wasn’t someone able to do a home birth or not have the kind of care they gave me. Not only did they prescribe me the medication I needed, but they also listened to me. They held my hand when I was scared. I’m so sad for all of Lane County for losing them.”
Most testimonies involved speaking upon the positive prenatal, birthing, postpartum and women’s care experiences with the McKenzie Midwives.
The McKenzie Midwives are a team of “kind, compassionate midwives” who offer midwifery care in hospitals, said Victoria Tippen, a former patient with McKenzie Midwives who now runs her own childbirth education company.
“They provide women and birthing people options supportive to achieving a low intervention birth. The McKenzie-Willamette cesarean rate is reasonable, likely due to midwifery care access,” Tippen said.
Availability is limited at other birthing centers around Lane County, people said in their testimonies.
McKay said she looked at other facilities before reaching out to McKenzie Midwives. She reached out to Our Community Birth Center, a non-profit midwifery birth center, and said she found it was full at the time.
“The birth centers available have one to two midwives each, even though the official statements online say that there’s plenty of room for our community to absorb,” McKay said.
Birthing with a midwife is an alternative birth option to OBGYN-assisted births. There are still birthing centers available across Eugene and Lane County, but these centers involve doctors, obstetricians, gynecologists and a high paycheck at the end of services. McKay noted lower costs of services with McKenzie Midwives than with other services without midwives.
Some birthing people prefer midwives due to them being medically trained and having a natural approach to serving pregnant people’s needs, said McKay. Midwives approach childbirth with the understanding that every body is different, rather than “going by the book” in the way a doctor or OBGYN might, she said.
“The World Health Organization, Center for Disease Control and Prevention, United Nations, and the American Academy of Public Health have stated that midwifery-led care has proven to reduce preterm birth, low birth rate, c-sections, and greater patient satisfaction,” Colleen Forbes, a licensed direct-entry midwife and certified professional midwife with experience of 25 years in midwifery practice, said.
McKenzie Midwives & Lactation Services closure sheds light on a nationwide issue of women’s care being left behind in the healthcare system. Over 200 maternity units have been closed in hospitals since 2011 throughout the nation, 13 of these closures being within the past year. Studies have shown an increase in maternal mortality within the past four years, as well as 36% of US counties living within maternity care deserts.
Abortion laws have been changing within the past year as well, with 12 states ruling near-total abortion bans, according to Guttmacher Institute, a sexual and reproductive health rights research organization.
With maternity units closing at higher rates and stricter abortion laws put into place last year, potentially more pregnant women are left without the proper care needed for pregnancy.
The patients at McKenzie Midwives are working with their midwives on where to transfer to at this time, according to McKenzie Midwives’ online statement. Many other similar birthing centers to McKenzie Midwives across Eugene and Lane County are either at capacity or are not what the patients would hope to work with.
“Eugene is a population with a huge community seeking [midwife] care. It’s astounding that we would not have certified nurse midwives in the Eugene-Springfield area, above all places,” Dr. Claudia Knight, a physician OBGYN in Eugene said.
McKay’s plans for where to transition to next are still up in the air, she said. Although being in her third and final trimester, McKay has experienced other local birthing centers requesting for her to pay for their services at a flat-rate price, as if she were in her first trimester continuing on until birth, she said.
“I felt so confident that I would be [with McKenzie Midwives] for the rest of the haul, so I’ve been trying to problem solve past that,” she said.
Good Samaritan Regional Medical Center in Corvallis is where McKay might ultimately give birth at. She lives in Veneta, which is almost an hour away from Good Samaritan.
“I feel completely ignored by the people who made this decision, but amazingly supported by the people of this community as it comes together to deal with this,” said McKay.
McKay has helped create the “Save McKenzie Midwives” website, which has information about the closure, resources for patients and recent happenings with everything to do with the closure.
“Since these closures seem to keep happening, I hope the website will last as a resource. Even if we fail, the midwives themselves feel incredibly supported and the community has come together in a way that’s super hopeful,” she said.
She discussed her hope for Lane County’s Board of Commissioners to create a new community birth center that has in its contract an obligation to give potential closing notices at nine months. She also suggested a tax on hospitals that do not provide midwife care.
“That’s just dreaming,” McKay said. “That’s just trying to look past what’s happening currently to hope for something better for the next people who have to deal with this.”
