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Even as the Bellevue center remains under lock and key, demand for such facilities is on the rise across New York City. Attending midwives at St. Luke's-Roosevelt Hospital keep waiting lists of mothers who want to use the hospital's birth center. At St. Vincent's Hospital, the planned Eli & Abby Manning Birth Center will offer acupuncture, hydrotherapy and other forms of natural birth support.
Neither center, however, is focused on the working class, immigrant-heavy population that defines Bellevue. And that leaves some angry. "If this were a population of assimilated, educated women, Bellevue would not stand a chance of closing down the birth center," says Sun. "But these women, they're barely making a living—they're just happy to have a kid here."
In the five boroughs, only two birth centers remain that accept women on Medicaid: the Brooklyn Birth Center near Coney Island, and the Morris Heights Birth Center in the Bronx.
