The Feb. 15 editorial "Burden of prenatal care" implies that regular checkups by a medical institution are a prerequisite if a woman whose contractions have begun expects acceptance by the same institution or another institution that's part of a perinatal care network. It somehow implies it is mainly the patient's fault for being rejected. It seems unconscionable that an obstetrician would refuse, or be reluctant to provide, emergency care because there were no previous checkup records.
If emergency rooms were reluctant to provide care for accident victims, or those with symptoms of acute myocardial infarction, because there were no previous medical checkup records, we would be outraged. The refusal by 12 hospitals to accept a life-threatening emergency patient is simply bad medicine, and to blame that tragedy on the patient for not getting regular checkups is to point the finger in the wrong direction.