When Idaho Banned Abortion, OB-GYNs Fled. The Doctors Who Stayed Are Cracking.

Last week, voters in Idaho rejected a measure that would have restored the right to terminate a pregnancy up to the point of fetal viability. (The state’s abortion ban went into effect after Roe v. Wade was overturned.) It’s a devastating blow for Idaho’s women and obstetricians—those who are still practicing, that is. More than one-third of the state’s OBGYNs are no longer doing obstetrics; many have moved or retired. Today, half of Idaho’s counties do not have a practicing obstetrician. Lisa Lerer spends time with some of the state’s remaining reproductive health doctors, who are just trying to keep their heads above water:

Parker reached into her patient’s abdomen and gently jiggled and wiggled with her hands, trying to separate the spongy red disc from the uterine wall, as she had done many times before in her practice as a family-medicine doctor with a specialization in high-risk obstetrics. The organ didn’t budge. Within minutes, Parker knew what she was facing: a placenta accreta, a dangerous complication in which the placenta grows into the uterine wall.

With her hands still in her patient’s open abdomen, Parker asked her nurse to call the obstetricians. The nurse held the phone to Parker’s ear as she received the news: The OB working that morning was in Washington and would be delayed. Her patient would have to wait, lying on the surgical table with her body cut open.