Twenty-one years ago, the prospect of closing the Noreen Stonor Drexel Birthing Center at Newport Hospital would have been unthinkable.
The hospital celebrated its “Baby Friendly” designation by the World Health Organization and UNICEF in 2004, the year it became only the 40th hospital in the country to earn that distinction, for its intensive work supporting and educating new breastfeeding mothers.
But the possibility that Aquidneck Island’s community hospital could shut down its award-winning labor and delivery unit exists now. And it drew about 200 people to Newport City Hall Tuesday night, including moms with babies and toddlers in tow and people in hospital scrubs. They came to see the Newport City Council pass a resolution advocating for the continued operation of the birthing center where 489 babies were born last year and 318 were born in the first six months of 2025.
“Get ready for a long fight,” Councilor Xaykham “Xay” Khamsyvoravong told the crowd. “We are at the tip of the spear of what is a very long fight to restore community health care and primary health care in the state.”
Khamsyvoravong sponsored the resolution urging the hospital’s owner-operator Brown University Health to maintain the birthing center amid rising financial pressure. Hospital leaders across the country have warned that cuts to Medicaid in the new federal budget could make it harder to maintain childbirth services, which are generally more expensive than routine surgeries and other hospital care.
Newport Hospital spokeswoman Nicole Searles said in a statement Tuesday that Brown University Health is “considering difficult decisions across Brown University Health” as part of its annual budget process with the goal of stabilizing its financial position.
“We take our responsibility to ensure that mothers and babies receive the highest level of care possible very seriously,” Searles added. “That commitment requires strong infrastructure and clinical expertise. At this point, no final decisions about the birthing center have been made, and there have been no immediate changes to our budget, operations, or staffing. We expect to make definitive decisions in the weeks ahead.”
Khamsyvoravong encouraged the crowd in the council chamber to share their stories and reach out to the governor’s office and other officials to make their voices heard.
“Write op-eds, send emails, make phone calls and continue to exert as much pressure as possible to ensure that we save this birthing center today and we work together in the future to fix primary care in this state,” Khamsyvoravong said.
Latisha Michel, a certified doula who addressed the council, warned that if the hospital closed the birthing center, patients without access to personal transportation could face hardships in having to get to hospitals 35 to 45 minutes away.
“Closing it would not only erase a critical piece of our community’s history, but also force birthing people to travel outside of their community at one of the most vulnerable moments in their lives,” Michel said. “If this center closes, people will be left with impossible choices, risk giving birth in transit, being separated from their support systems or face unfamiliar and overstretched hospitals elsewhere.”
The birthing center opened in 1995 and was named in honor of Newport philanthropist Noreen Stonor Drexel in 2003. Drexel, who passed away in 2012, made improving health care and education a primary focus of her work.
“Mrs. Drexel would be terribly betrayed if her dream of the new birthing center and a most generous gift were wasted,” retired health care administrative director and pharmacist Bart Grimes told the council.
Carol Bazarsky, chair of the Newport Hospital Foundation Board of Trustees, turned around at the podium to face the crowd and said she spoke with Brown University Health Chief Operating Officer Sarah Frost about the birthing center. Bazarsky said Frost had emphasized that no decision has been made yet and that the public would be given the opportunity to have their voices heard beforehand.
“There is no question that the birthing center is a viable, beautiful part of our hospital and our community,” Bazarsky said.
Council member Lynn Ceglie was absent from Tuesday’s meeting.
This story was originally published by the Rhode Island Current.
