Its closure will mark the 12th Maine maternity unit to shut down since 2015, leaving fewer than half of the state’s 34 hospitals with a place to deliver a baby. The disappearing maternity wards have become one of the starkest signs of Maine’s rural health-care crisis. “I had my own kids in rural Maine. With Lincoln joining the list, 12 Maine maternity units will have disappeared since 2015. There is no honest way to examine Maine’s maternity crisis without acknowledging the difficult economics confronting hospitals.