Dr. Marvin Buehner estimates he’s delivered 9,000 babies over 30 years. But as he retires from his practice, he’s issuing a warning for women’s health west river.
Dr. Buehner moved to Rapid City from California in 1993 to provide healthcare for Native women. Over the course of his career, he went from providing medical care in underserved communities to opening his own practice.
Dr. Buehner fears conditions for women’s health have gotten worse.
“The acuity of things that we’re seeing on the obstetrical side is higher and higher. With the syphilis epidemic and so many people, native and non-native, not getting adequate prenatal care we’re seeing lots of high-risk cases. Which, then, also, makes it much harder on the remaining physicians and is an incentive for them to get out of obstetrics, which is exactly what’s happening.”
With Buehner retiring, now there are six obstetricians working in Rapid City. Buehner said that’s half of what the community needs.
The Black Hills is the referral center for most of western South Dakota, parts of Wyoming and Montana. More than half of South Dakota counties are considered a maternal healthcare desert.
Buehner, who has run Black Hills OBGYN for the last several years, said he was unable to sell his clinic. He attributes that partly because it’s hard to recruit OBs to Rapid City.
He said the location as well as a hostile political climate —discourages new providers from moving to the Black Hills. He attributes the hostile climate to the state’s abortion trigger law going into effect in 2022. That law makes it a class six felony to perform most abortions.
“Because there are so many medical situations where termination of a pregnancy is in the mother’s best interest—especially in cases where the fetus has no chance of surviving," Buehner said. "It might have a lethal anomaly, anencephaly—which is no brain, certain chromosome anomalies. Things where they just don’t have a chance of survival, but if there’s a heartbeat we can’t intervene.”
Dr. Buehner actively opposed abortion restrictions when voters rejected near total bans in 2006 and 2008. He said the upcoming abortion ballot question aligns with what most voters are comfortable with, while protecting a woman’s right to make their own healthcare decisions in most cases.
His last day is Sept. 1.
Constitutional Amendment G prohibits the state from banning abortion in the first trimester, lets the state restrict abortion in the second trimester and ban it in the third—except to save the life or health of the mother.
Opponents of Constitutional Amendment G call the measure too extreme.
