Today, the local MaineHealth/Lincoln Hospital Board voted to close Miles Hospital's Labor & Delivery unit. The vote now moves to the regional board, and then the MaineHealth Board of Trustees on Aug. 6.

The Miles Delivers Action Coalition just released an open letter (attached) responding to the vote.

Key points:

- The board voted for closure despite hearing from more than 10,000 community members and 50+ MaineHealth providers who wanted the unit to stay open, and zero people who wanted it closed.

- Once closed, women in the county would have no local option for a C-section delivery; the coalition notes the Miles ER could only intervene surgically after a woman has been clinically dead for several minutes.

- Even if the local board had voted to keep the unit open, the decision would still have gone to the MaineHealth Board of Trustees for final approval.

- The coalition names all 16 board members and calls out the vote as a failure of local oversight that MaineHealth promises but, in their view, did not deliver here.