The closure of a Labor & Delivery Unit is more than a hospital business decision - it is a regional public health decision that affects mothers, babies, healthcare professionals, and entire communities.

We are asking Illinois healthcare professionals to stand together and call on our legislators to require a comprehensive regional impact assessment before any hospital is permitted to close or substantially reduce maternity services. 

Please sign, share, and help us protect access to safe maternity care in our neighborhoods and preserve Illinois regionalized perinatal system.

PETITION TO PROTECT MATERNAL AND NEWBORN SAFETY IN ILLINOIS
To the Governor of Illinois, Members of the Illinois General Assembly, the Illinois Department of Public Health, and the Illinois Health Facilities and Services Review Board:

We, the undersigned physicians, nurses, healthcare professionals, and concerned citizens, call upon the State of Illinois to strengthen oversight of the suspension, consolidation, or closure of hospital Labor & Delivery and obstetric services.

We recognize that Illinois hospitals face significant financial pressures, including declining birth rates, inadequate reimbursement, rising operating costs, workforce shortages, and an increasingly difficult medico-legal environment.

But financial necessity cannot supersede maternal and newborn safety.

The closure of a Labor & Delivery unit is fundamentally different from the discontinuation of many other hospital services. Pregnancy is time-sensitive and unpredictable. Labor, hemorrhage, severe hypertension, placental abruption, fetal distress, premature delivery, cord prolapse, uterine rupture and other obstetric emergencies can occur without warning. Increasing the distance between a pregnant woman and appropriate obstetric care can have life-altering consequences for both mother and child.

We therefore urge Illinois to require, before any hospital or healthcare system—whether for-profit, nonprofit, private, or public—may suspend, consolidate, or permanently discontinue obstetric services:

1. A mandatory independent Maternal and Newborn Safety Impact Assessment, evaluating travel times, emergency access, surrounding hospital capacity, high-risk pregnancy services, neonatal resources, ambulance and transfer capabilities, and the effect on medically underserved communities.

2. Meaningful advance notice to patients, physicians, nurses, emergency medical services, surrounding hospitals, and the affected community, with special protections for pregnant patients already receiving prenatal care or scheduled for delivery.

3. A documented continuity-of-care plan identifying where affected patients will deliver and demonstrating that receiving hospitals have adequate obstetric, nursing, anesthesia, operating-room, blood-bank, maternal-fetal medicine, and neonatal capacity.

4. A specific emergency obstetric safety plan addressing women who present in active labor or with hemorrhage, hypertensive emergencies, fetal compromise, premature labor, or other obstetric emergencies after services have been suspended.

5. Public review and transparent reporting before—not after—the loss of services, including an opportunity for affected physicians, nurses, patients, emergency medical personnel, and community members to be heard.

Illinois has spent decades building a regionalized perinatal system designed to ensure that mothers and babies receive the right care at the right place and at the right time. The loss of community Labor & Delivery units must not be allowed to undermine that progress.

Thirty days may be administrative notice. It is not necessarily a maternal-safety plan.

We are not asking Illinois to require hospitals to operate financially unsustainable services indefinitely. We are asking that when an essential maternity service must close, the transition be deliberate, transparent, medically responsible, and safe.

No pregnant woman should discover late in pregnancy that the hospital where she planned to deliver will no longer be available without knowing exactly where she will go, who will care for her, and whether that hospital is prepared to receive her.

Maternal and newborn safety must come before the doors close.

We respectfully ask the Illinois General Assembly to enact legislation establishing these protections statewide.