[TheCoelacanth]

I think you are reading that wrong. There are 248 freestanding birthing centers that are not attached to hospitals. 0.4% of births occur in birthing centers. 0.9% occur at home. 98.6% of births occur in hospitals. There are >5000 hospitals in the US.

[dredmorbius]

A survey or count of maternity words, or labour & maternity centres, or ... whatever else they're called now ... is rather hard to come by.

This long HuffPo piece profiling the problem ... manages to specifically fail to answer that question, though it does note that "more than half of all rural counties in this country are now without a single local hospital where women can get prenatal care and deliver babies."

https://outline.com/JPgKaS

This list suggests there are 1627 rural counties in the US. So at least 814 of them lack a birthing facility (hospital, clinic, etc.) of some stripe.

http://files.consumerfinance.gov/f/201410_cfpb_final-list-ru...

There are 3,142 counties total in the US.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_United_States_counti...

[dredmorbius]

Ah, that could very well be the case, as the number sounded somewhat absurdly low. I was trusting in the source, and definitions weren't particularly clear.

I'm not sure every "hospital" itself has a maternity ward, given my familiarity with several specifically in outlying areas (many are not much more than glorified first-aid stations, without permanent resident physician staff -- that happens to be how I'm principally aware of them).

But we're down to something on the order of 2500 - 5000 facilties, now, which remains a pretty low count.