The central and local governments need to lead efforts and offer financial support to childbirth facilities to keep them running.

Govt like to spend money but to make combination of policy and money work properly that's the real problem.

And they wonder why the childbirth rate continues to decline.

My daughter gave birth to our first grandchild this year, but we live in one of those municipalities without a childbirth facility. She was able to use her gynecologist for the first trimester of her pregnancy but then had to go to a hospital two cities over for other checkups and the actual birth.

The situation is bad. I am unbelievably happy that I was able to meet my grandson (he is the absolute joy of my life), but who knows if there will be any others?

this gov need send own taxpayers money to Ukraine first...

why to care about problems at home...they will just keep "wowing" for this and that...

Part of the problem here is that many women with smooth pregnancies will choose a maternity clinic because they tend to be much nicer and much more flexible. This reduces the demand for maternity facilities at general hospitals, which then close due to very low demand. Our local general hospital just about hung onto its maternity ward after attempts to close it. That particular hospital happens to be very depressing and I can fully understand women choosing to give birth elsewhere. Not all hospitals are grey, cold and depressing, but ours certainly is.

Maternity clinics can only handle straightforward births (including C sections) and if there are any complications, they call an ambulance and its off to the general hospital. With the average age of mothers going up, if anything the risk of complications will be increasing.

The hen or egg problem again? Of course more pregnancies will again lead to more birth and maternity clinics. But it's of course easier and more convenient to hide behind a current lacking of such places and use that as another reason for not having or wanting a family and children. Btw globally, most babies are born in places and countries without any or only a very rare number of birth clinics or medical treatment. How do they manage all that there, and even increasingly?

The hen or egg problem again?

Not really the case, the lack of appropriate facilities is not an "excuse" as you try to misrepresent but a perfectly valid reason for people to choose not to have children, specially those that had one and personally experienced the difficulties and risks that come from the lack of support.

If the government is supposedly trying to promote births then first of all it has to provide anything and everything that is necessary for this, even if nobody uses it for a while. Pretending that people (and specially the children) should suffer for a while to justify providing everything that is lacking makes absolutely no sense.