Pregnant Moms Denied Delivery Care

Sep 15, 2025

Starting December 31, Aspirus Ironwood Hospital, in the western end of Michigan’s Upper Peninsula, will eliminate its labor and delivery services.

Pregnant women will have to somehow make a 45-mile drive to Tamarack Health Ashland Medical Center, another Aspirus Health facility, in Ashland, Wisconsin—or give birth in Ironwood hospital’s emergency department—or what, fend for themselves?!

According to a spokesman for Aspirus, the current closure of this birthing center was due to its inability to draw adequate staffing to the region.

What a crock. It’s nothing but outrageous from a company/conglomerate that operates 18 hospitals in Michigan’s Upper Peninsula, northeastern Minnesota, northern and central Wisconsin. It’s nothing but outrageous because Aspirus already had closed its Ontonagan hospital and its labor and delivery services and some nurse staffing at Keweenaw Hospital in 2024.

Recently, the state of Michigan had allocated 1.2 million dollars to Aspirus to help subsidize the costs of providing prenatal, birthing and postpartum services at its Ironwood hospital. But Aspirus said in an email to the Detroit Free Press that “accepting taxpayer dollars to temporarily prop up an inappropriate care model would not have been responsible.”

In other words, it’s an “inappropriate care model” because labor and delivery services are always the area of a hospital where they don’t make money, and even less so in rural areas with smaller populations. They are not profitable in areas, like the U.P., where Medicaid covers many of the childbirths.

This is a medical system where health care isn’t the priority, but profit is. And areas of the country, like Michigan’s Upper Peninsula, have felt the brunt, with hospital closures and services eliminated.

And it’s women and babies who pay the highest price for these draconian cuts.