More Than One Third of U.S. Counties Are Maternity Care Deserts

In the last eight years, women living in counties in one-third of the country have faced an abysmal reality: they live in a maternity care desert, which means a place where there are no hospitals or birth centers or even any obstetric clinicians. That reality has persisted: in its new 2026 report on women’s access to ob-gyn services, released on August 11, the March of Dimes found that 34.6% of U.S. counties are maternity care deserts, and that more than half of U.S. counties lack a hospital with labor and delivery services. That’s relatively unchanged since 2016, the report found. But the situation is likely to soon get even worse, experts say. H.R. 1, known as the One Big Beautiful Bill Act, which was signed into law on July 4, 2025, is expected to dramatically cut payments to Medicaid as well as introduce burdens that make it more difficult for people to stay on Medicaid. Medicaid already reimburses hospitals at a lower rate than services cost; on average, Medicaid paid hospitals $8,732 less for childbirth services than did employer-sponsored health plans, one 2022 study found. “It is going to be very challenging for rural hospitals to remain viable,” says Dr. Michael Warren, ch...