I am over nine months pregnant. 41 weeks and a few days, actually. There was a lot of stress due to the Swedish class, lack of time I could spend on the French class, and the dreaded driver’s license test, but otherwise, it’s been a fairly uneventful time.

However the latest source of stress came from the County Medical Administration, known locally as Landstinget.  In all of its infinite wisdom and compassion, they decided to close the Labor and Delivery section of the hospital this past holiday season while offering the services of another hospital about 70 miles away. After a few weeks, the other will close and this one will be opened. The decision has been widely criticized by the midwives, doctors, surgeons, unions and expectant mothers.  Did all this criticism change their mind?  Of course not.

The more pertinent issues were:

1. The road between the two hospitals is a Class 4 road. This means it has poor cell coverage, poor maintenance, low priority in snow plowing, and there is (for the most part) no wildlife fence.

2. The decision was made in haste after the holiday staff schedule was already set. Everyone (midwives, doctors, nurses, etc…) had to find alternate work on a very short notice or else be forced to take vacation (paid or unpaid). Women entering their third trimester were suddenly told that the hospital five minutes away would no longer be available to them. The expectant mothers, counting on that short drive, were forced to reassess their birth or babysitting arrangements by having to negotiate a 70 mile drive.  That went double for the women who didn’t live so close to the local hospital, and even further away from the one that would be opened.

3. In my town, there were only two ambulances available to twenty expectant mothers over the course of a month. If more were needed, the other towns involved could donate theirs.. from over 70 miles away.

Before anyone cries out, “This is what happens with socialized medicine!”, let me point the blame at the Moderaternas, a primarily capitalist political party. One who bears a large portion of responsibility is elected Moderaterna official, Jacomina Beertema, a Dutch ex-patriot who currently occupies the County Commissioner seat in the Health and Medical Care section. In order to save money from the outrageous cost of floating surgeons over the holidays, the decision was made to just shut the ward down. Beertema then repeatedly went on record stating that women were not allowed to give birth at any other hospital other than in-county hospitals, thus preventing extra costs between counties. That meant that pregnant women could not travel up the well-maintained highway to a closer and well-known university hospital, sitting just outside our county. Whether Beertema was misinformed, misunderstood the law, or flat-out lied – we’ll never know. She stubbornly refused to budge from her position until the hospitals themselves finally pointed out that this was simply not true, and that women had the right to give birth wherever they wanted.

While my Labor and Delivery ward is now opened, the second hospital affected by this closing still has a few days to go before reopening. In fact, this year’s first deliveries were from its patients. The horror stories are trickling in. Women have reported that due to the closing, other hospitals were filled, and they were turned away due to lack of space. One of the wards available does not have a NICU. Women waited until the last-minute to go into the hospital because they could be sent away if they were not dilated enough. That’s a possible 280 miles roundtrip in labor. One woman simply could not find a usable road to the hospital that she was supposed to go to. It was in the middle of a snow storm.

The county’s response to all this? They’ll consider it a resounding success if even just a little money is saved. In fact, they hope to make this winter closing a permanent part of their operations.  Services are already cut during the summer, so this would be the second yearly occurrence.

I would like to point out that these stories really do nothing except captivate the readers’ attention. The only people that mattered in the fight to keep the ward opened were the unions. They used the only weapon that Landstinget understood – money. But in the end, despite protests being put up by anyone with a conscious, Landstinget got their way and the ward was shut down. They publicly stated that they were not responsible for the roads being unusable. They did not seek to increase the number of emergency vehicles available to anyone. No NICU? Who cares? Use that hospital anyways.

My suspicion is that the Labor and Delivery ward was shut down because Landstinget figured the public would put up the least resistance compared with other, more expensive sections of the hospital. In other words, they felt it was O.K. to bully expectant mothers because they are, in general, among the less supported and less populated groups in society. If you are not about to have a baby, you don’t really empathize. I spoke with a few people about it, and I was not really surprised by the nonchalant attitudes. One woman said that if a pregnant woman had a genuine emergency, they could go to the Emergency Room and see a pediatrician. Another said that a lot of people were against it, so of course they wouldn’t close the ward.

This stink will eventually blow over, people will forget, and as a result, the Moderaternas might get another important seat come next election. It’s the test of social welfare, and how far people are willing to go to protect those weakest in society. Are they going to remember and vote differently, or is it a case of “it’s not me”? Where will the line be drawn on services that are allowed to be cut? Is the Emergency Room next? Maybe Pediatrics? How about Elderly Care?

Is Sweden on its way to tossing out the social welfare model in favor for a more profitable one?  Let me guess, a lot of people would be against that, so of course it would never happen.