Medicaid cuts put maternity care at risk as hospitals close labor and delivery units

Fifty-two maternity wards have closed since the Trump administration’s sweeping Medicaid legislation was announced, with more closures expected as hospitals brace for reduced federal funding and new eligibility requirements.

Hospitals across the United States are closing maternity wards as they prepare for federal Medicaid cuts, raising concerns about whether pregnant patients will be able to access care close to home.

An analysis by the nonprofit Protect Our Care found that 52 maternity wards have closed since President Donald Trump’s sweeping tax and spending legislation was announced in July 2025. Another eight have announced plans to close, according to The Guardian.

The law, known as the One Big Beautiful Bill Act, reduces federal Medicaid funding and introduces new eligibility requirements for many adult beneficiaries. Although its full financial effects are expected to be felt in 2027, some hospitals have already cited the coming changes as a factor in their decisions to end maternity services.

The stakes are significant for families who depend on Medicaid to pay for childbirth. The program covers about 40% of births nationwide, making it a major source of funding for hospitals that provide labor and delivery services.

When a hospital closes its maternity ward, patients may have to travel to another city or county to give birth. For families without reliable transportation, paid time off or money for additional expenses, finding another hospital can become a significant challenge.

Rural communities are particularly vulnerable because hospitals often operate with limited resources while maintaining services that require around-the-clock staffing.

Centra Southside Community Hospital in Virginia and St. Mary’s Sacred Heart Hospital in rural northeastern Georgia are among the facilities that have permanently closed their maternity wards. Both cited anticipated federal Medicaid policy changes as a reason for their decisions, The Guardian reported.

Erin Jones, senior director of legislative and strategic counsel at March of Dimes, said the funding changes could place additional pressure on state budgets and hospitals.

“We’re deeply concerned that these changes already have and will continue to worsen an already serious maternity care crisis,” Jones told The Guardian.

March of Dimes has identified 31 rural hospitals with labor and delivery services that are at risk. If those facilities close their units, 96 counties could lose their remaining local labor and delivery services, according to the organization.

The closures would add to an existing shortage of maternity care. In its 2026 report, March of Dimes identified at least 96 publicly reported labor and delivery unit closures across 35 states between January 2024 and May 2026. In nearly 60% of affected counties, the closed unit was the only local birthing facility.

Those closures increased travel times to maternity care by an average of 25 minutes in affected communities, the organization found.

Hospitals face several challenges in keeping maternity wards open, including staffing shortages, low reimbursement rates, declining birth rates and the expense of maintaining services around the clock. Medicaid cuts could intensify those pressures for facilities that already operate on narrow financial margins.

The law’s new Medicaid work requirements are another source of concern, particularly for people whose eligibility status may change during pregnancy.

Pregnant women are supposed to be exempt from the new work requirements. However, Benjamin Sommers, a professor of health care economics at Harvard University’s T.H. Chan School of Public Health, told The Guardian that some pregnant patients are enrolled through Medicaid expansion rather than a pregnancy-specific eligibility category.

If a state does not know that a beneficiary is pregnant, the patient could mistakenly assume the exemption applies automatically and risk losing coverage, Sommers said.

That distinction matters because Medicaid helps pay for prenatal visits, childbirth and postpartum care. An interruption in coverage can make it harder for patients to maintain consistent medical care during a period when access to providers is especially important.

The law also reduces federal financial support for Medicaid, putting pressure on states and health care providers that rely on the program. Hospitals facing lower revenue may have to reconsider services that are expensive to maintain but essential to the communities they serve.

The loss of maternity services raises additional concerns for Black families, who already face significant disparities in maternal health outcomes.

Black women in the United States die from pregnancy-related causes at substantially higher rates than white women, according to federal health data. Access to timely prenatal care, qualified providers and emergency obstetric services remains an important part of addressing those disparities.

The effects of a maternity ward closure can extend beyond the delivery room. Longer trips to hospitals can complicate prenatal appointments, increase transportation costs and make it harder for families to obtain timely care when complications arise.

These burdens may be especially difficult for low-income families and people living in rural areas where alternative providers are limited. March of Dimes found that women living in maternity care deserts, or counties without obstetric clinicians or birthing facilities, travel about three times farther to reach labor and delivery services than women in counties with full access to maternity care.

The organization also reported that more than one-third of U.S. counties were maternity care deserts in its 2026 assessment, affecting 2.4 million women of reproductive age.

The findings underscore that access to maternity care was already uneven before the latest Medicaid changes. The additional financial pressure on hospitals could make it harder for some communities to maintain the services that remain available.

Researchers are also concerned about the ability to track how changes to federal health policy affect pregnant patients and newborns.

In early 2025, the Trump administration placed the entire team responsible for the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention’s Pregnancy Risk Assessment Monitoring System on administrative leave. The system collects information about women’s experiences before, during and after pregnancy.

According to a report by academics and former CDC staff reviewed by The Guardian, the disruption affected the collection and management of data used to study maternal and infant health.

Rita Hamad, a professor of social epidemiology and public policy at Harvard’s T.H. Chan School of Public Health and a co-author of the report, told The Guardian that researchers had lost access to important information needed to examine more recent trends.

The disruption could make it harder to identify emerging disparities and assess the effects of changes to health coverage and other safety-net programs.

As federal Medicaid changes approach full implementation, hospitals and health care advocates are watching for further closures. The extent of the impact will depend on how states implement the new requirements, how hospitals respond to funding pressures and whether alternative resources can help preserve maternity services.

For families in communities that have already lost a labor and delivery unit, the consequences are more immediate. Finding a place to give birth may now mean traveling farther, arranging additional transportation and navigating a health care system with fewer local options.