When I lived in the Dallas/Fort Worth area (the “Metroplex”), I often wanted—or, perhaps needed—to escape the density and frenzy of urban life. More than occasionally, I got relief by retreating into the rolling hills and plains of north central Texas. Driving two or three hours west and northwest, the rural and semi-rural environment helped me decompress. Experiencing rural and semi-rural environments felt softer and more welcoming than the constant pressure of dealing with city life. The routes I drove took me through pastureland and small towns, where I assumed people lived at a slower pace and could enjoy a more leisurely lifestyle than in the city; the pressure-cooker that defines urbanization. Getting away from freeway traffic and offensive billboards and reports of non-stop violent crime and road rage kept me from joining the ranks of the dangerously and incurably angry. I envied people who lived in sparsely-populated areas, where I thought—I fantasized—were largely immune to big-city problems. But, that was just wishful thinking.
Thanks to an Associated Press article I read this morning, I was reminded that my thinking was delusional. The article related the plight confronting the people in and around the town of Olney, Texas, where the hospital is no longer able to deliver babies. Financial woes, state politics, federal regulations, and economic dislocations have forced the Olney Hamilton Hospital to stop offering the level of maternity care required to allow it to continue its 100-year-history of providing a place for pregnant women to give birth. The hospital in another nearby town, Graham, stopped delivering babies in 2015, citing the fact that it was reimbursed only 39% of the expense per birth.
Tom Parker, head of the town’s economic development corporation, is quoted in the Associated Press article as saying, “If you don’t have a high school and a hospital where you can have babies, that town’s not going to get up off its knees…It might have been something once, but if you don’t have youth, if you don’t have new babies, you don’t have hope.”
Having never been interested in having children, I don’t think I have ever considered that the absence of maternity services in a community is likely to result in a community’s stagnation and, ultimately, disintegration. While this may not be a “big city” problem, it certainly qualifies as equal in scope to—perhaps even greater than—threats facing cities. Still, the relative peace and quiet of a rural or semi-rural environment is extremely appealing to me. But the reality that big cities do not have a monopoly on stress and existential challenges has found its way into my idealism. Humanity, no matter where or how sparsely settled, faces challenges all its own.
