Turtle Talk

Here is the post, titled “Pregnant Sioux Women Face ‘Hell-Rides’ to Hospital, Induced Labors — and the ACLU Wants to Know Why.” An excerpt:

When I read my baby books, they said I should discuss my birth plan with my doctor and get a tour of the hospital,” said a new mother from the Cheyenne River Sioux Tribe, in South Dakota. “But there was nothing for me. Not even a few Lamaze classes. Just congratulations and good luck.”

She and other pregnant women

from the Cheyenne River Sioux Tribe have needed all the luck they can get. For about 10 years, they’ve traveled 90-plus miles over rough roads to give birth at St. Mary’s Healthcare Center, in Pierre, South Dakota, which provides obstetrical care under contract to the Indian Health Service (IHS), the health care provider for Native Americans nationwide. If fate is on the women’s side, they make the so-called “hell ride” strapped to a gurney in one of the few ambulances that serve the tribe’s reservation, which is about the size of Connecticut. If lady luck isn’t smiling on them, women in labor must scrounge transport in private vehicles, which are rare in the desperately poor area. This is all necessary because their reservation has not had obstetrical facilities since 2001.

In 2009, the American Civil Liberties Union requested that the IHS reveal plans for a Cheyenne River hospital and birthing center that’s purportedly been in the works for most of a decade and is supposed to be paid for, in part, by stimulus money. The agency failed to cough up any data, so in September 2010 the civil-liberties group filed a federal lawsuit under the Freedom of Information Act, or FOIA.

Chi Mgbako, a Fordham law school professor and director of the Walter Leitner International Human Rights Clinic, compared health care for South Dakota’s Native women to that in developing nations. She visited South Dakota in 2009, interviewed Native women in several areas, and participated with the ACLU in talking circles on the Cheyenne River Indian Reservation. “I’ve worked on women’s reproductive health rights in poor countries like Malawi and Ethiopia,” said Mgbako. “Issues on South Dakota reservations were shockingly similar, including women traveling miles in sub-optimum conditions in order to deliver their babies in safe birthing units.” Mgbako described the IHS as failing its female patients and called the planned Cheyenne River hospital and birthing unit a pressing need.

As a result of the FOIA lawsuit, the ACLU recently received a few documents. “What we’ve got so far doesn’t tell us much,” said the rights group’s South Dakota director, attorney Robert Doody. More items may be disclosed in the coming months. Alexa Kolbi-Molinas, staff attorney with the ACLU’s Reproductive Freedom Project, said she was still trying to contact the government lawyer handling the suit in order to figure out what documents are coming and when — and if the ACLU will have to fight to learn what’s really going on at Cheyenne River.

The IHS refused to comment for this article, citing the ongoing suit. Though St. Mary’s is not named in the suit, its spokesperson said only, “We strive to provide the best care for all our patients.”