BEVERLY — The North Shore Birth Center at Beverly Hospital permanently shut its doors on Thursday, concluding a saga that began in May, when Beth Israel Lahey Health, Beverly Hospital’s parent company, first announced plans to shutter the center.
The center’s closure marks the end of the last birthing center in Eastern Massachusetts, drawing fierce criticism from local officials.
The blowback from local leaders, including Lynn Mayor Jared Nicholson, and State Senators Brendan Crighton (D-Lynn) and Joan Lovely (D-Salem), led to a 90-day delay on the closure of the center, first announced in August, which advocates say provides a unique experience for women seeking a home-birth experience.
The Birth Center offered midwifery-led care and an out-of-hospital birth choice for the North Shore region. Operating on the campus of Beverly Hospital since 1980, the center supported the births of 10,000 babies and provided compassionate, evidence-based maternal and women’s health care services.
The decision to shutter the center, hospital officials said, was driven by a staffing shortage, which made it difficult for the center to meet the needs of patients. In a statement, Beverly Hospital President Tom Sands cited “the current staffing climate and its direct effect on the hospital’s ability to ensure the quality of care offered by the service.”
As a result of what officials dubbed “constructive dialogue with community members,” BILH has committed to “expanding midwifery services in the community and investing $1.5 million in financial support for community-based birth centers, as well as temporarily leasing the North Shore Birth Center building to an independent certified nurse midwifery practice.”
“We extend our deep gratitude to members of the community, our elected officials and, importantly, to all of our clinicians and staff who provide care to our patients and their babies,” Sands said in the statement. “We remain steadfastly committed to caring for our community and providing safe, high-quality care to our patients and families.”
In a statement, Nicholson said that he believes the birthing center’s closure will have a detrimental impact on the North Shore, particularly for low-income community members and people of color.
“The closure of the North Shore Birth Center is a huge loss to both our community and neighboring communities,” said Nicholson, whose son was born at the center. “This birth center has provided significant care to women and caregivers for decades, and has improved birth conditions and outcomes. We must continue to stand up for reproductive justice and stress that closing birth centers like the North Shore Birth Center will disproportionately impact people of color and those from low-income backgrounds.”
Crighton echoed Nicholson’s remarks, adding that the region should work towards expanding women’s health care.
“For decades, families have relied on the North Shore Birth Center, so its absence will leave a glaring care gap in our region,” Crighton said. “I commend the efforts of all those who fought tirelessly to oppose the closure. We must continue working together to expand access to birth care and women’s health care more generally.”
Lovely, in a telephone interview Thursday, said she was disappointed by Lahey’s decision to close the center, particularly considering what she said was a lack of promotion of the services provided by the center.
“This is difficult, but I felt like, yesterday, the fact that it was raining, it was kind of like tears that this beloved birth center was officially closed as of today,” said Lovely, who gave birth to her three children at Beverly Hospital. “But, having said that Lahey has made a commitment, a big commitment to work towards helping to open another birth center, one that they won’t run … but we’ve been able to impress upon them, that not all births require hospital medical setting.”
“We shouldn’t be closing birth centers, we should be opening more,” she added.
While Lovely said Lahey shouldn’t bear all of the blame for the center’s closure, citing the detrimental impact of the COVID-19 pandemic on industries across the country, she said the company should have done more to spread awareness to the community that the center was in trouble.
“It was Lahey’s responsibility to say, ‘hey, you know, what, we’re struggling here.’ And not just go ahead and file that DPH filing for closure. The conversation should have been held well in advance of that. I wasn’t part of those conversations, maybe they were happening, but no one that I know of was involved in this,” she said.
The center, she said, offered women the experience that they might get during a home birth under the supervision of medical professionals, and with the center’s location adjacent to the hospital, the ability to receive emergency treatment should anything go wrong.
“It couldn’t have been more perfect,” Lovely said. “Now if you want to have your baby at a birth center, you go to Western Massachusetts? When you’re pregnant, you’re seeing your obstetrician monthly, so do you drive three hours to see your obstetrician? That makes no sense. And what about for people who don’t have a car? Public transportation doesn’t go out there. There’s so many factors that roll into this.”
The Campaign to Save the North Shore Birth Center on Thursday launched a fundraiser for what they called “a new phase in [the] fight to preserve access to birth choice and high quality care for the region.”
In a video attached to the fundraiser, a number of women spoke about the positive impact the center had on them during their pregnancies.
“I remember laboring in the birth center and laying in that bed and listening to music and just feeling really safe,” said Karen Galvez.
“It was hugely impactful to have that experience be inclusive from the very beginning,” added Jordan Caress-Wheelwright.
“Because of them I was able to have a child, have a good experience, and then start my life as a mom and you can do that pretty seamlessly when you have a team that actually cares about you,” said Zoe Hastings.
Charlie McKenna can be reached at [email protected]. Anthony Cammalleri can be reached at [email protected].