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Many states are also purging their Medicaid rolls, leaving new moms and infants without access to care, often because of paperwork mix-ups. Last year, Texas erroneously disenrolled thousands of pregnant women, state whistleblowers claim.
Meanwhile, gridlock and obstructionism on Capitol Hill have taken a toll on the availability of critical maternal and fetal care.
Syphilis cases have soared in recent years, reaching their highest level since the 1950s. This has put both adults and their in-utero children at risk, as the disease can transfer from mother to baby through the placenta (known as congenital syphilis). The consequences for babies are severe: About 40 percent of babies born to women with untreated syphilis are stillborn or die as a newborn, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention reports. Others suffer from bone damage, anemia and nerve problems causing blindness or deafness, among other complications.
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But the disease is easily treatable, assuming patients know they have it and receive care. So doctors have asked for more funding to support testing, tracking and treatment.
Alas, as part of last year’s debt limit showdown, Republicans pushed for, and Democrats ultimately capitulated to, large cuts to government spending, including to public health programs for sexually transmitted diseases. The actual funding levels have been in limbo, as Congress has been unable to pass a budget for the current fiscal year.
Legislative gridlock has also shortchanged the Special Supplemental Nutrition Program for Women, Infants, and Children, known as WIC. Research has found that prenatal participation in WIC has led to better birth outcomes and fewer infant deaths. But with no budget agreement several months into the current fiscal year, WIC funding has stayed flat at last year’s level. This is inadequate to cover all eligible applicants this year given higher-than-expected participation rates and food costs.
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In the coming months, if no increase in funding passes, pregnant and postpartum women and young children could end up on waitlists for the first time in 25 years, according to the Center on Budget and Policy Priorities. While it is tempting to blame “Congress” for this outcome, the greater obstacle is House Republicans, who have explicitly tried to reduce WIC funding.
Finally, there’s the elephant in the room: the Dobbs decision, championed by conservatives, which has enabled abortion bans around the country. While these bans have forced more unintended pregnancies to be carried to term, they have also jeopardized wanted pregnancies — even those that might be considered less complicated.
That’s because experienced obstetricians are fleeing red states because of fears of legal liability and restrictions on their ability to provide needed care. States with abortion bans likewise saw the number of applicants for OB/GYN residencies drop more than 10 percent in 2023, the Association of American Medical Colleges reports.
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“Fewer providers will mean less access to prenatal care, to say nothing of the restrictions those providers face when it comes to providing certain kinds of care,” said Dana Suskind, co-director of the University of Chicago’s TMW Center for Early Learning + Public Health.
There are some encouraging counterexamples to this broad trend. For example, most states have now taken up a federal option to extend postpartum Medicaid coverage. (Of course, that only helps those who aren’t erroneously purged from Medicaid rolls.)
Still, politicians who call themselves pro-life should be passing more policies to support lives at all ages, including those in utero. Doing so would not only abide by their moralizing rhetoric; it would also support their stated concerns about budget deficits. Each dollar spent on prenatal nutrition and other maternal care offers a great return on investment by reducing spending on government services further down the line.
Something you’d never guess from any of their actual policy choices.
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Conservative politicians are sometimes accused of being pro-life up until the point the baby is born. But perhaps even that assessment is too generous.
Unborn children are getting short shrift thanks to recent state and federal policy choices that have worsened access to prenatal care.
Take, for instance, a new Florida law championed by Gov. Ron DeSantis (R) that forces hospitals that receive any Medicaid dollars to ask patients about their immigration status — even though undocumented women in the state are not on, and do not qualify for, Medicaid.
Predictably, the law has discouraged immigrants from accessing available care, including when pregnant. Providers and maternity-focused nonprofits in the state report that fewer immigrant women have shown up for medical checkups and prenatal care since the law went into effect last year. Some pregnant women have been reluctant to seek emergency care when in severe pain or facing complications for fear that their immigration status will be used against them, advocates report.
Even if the state is indifferent to the health of foreign-born women, it should at least feign an interest in their gestating, U.S.-citizen children.
Many states are also purging their Medicaid rolls, leaving new moms and infants without access to care, often because of paperwork mix-ups. Last year, Texas erroneously disenrolled thousands of pregnant women, state whistleblowers claim.
Meanwhile, gridlock and obstructionism on Capitol Hill have taken a toll on the availability of critical maternal and fetal care.
Syphilis cases have soared in recent years, reaching their highest level since the 1950s. This has put both adults and their in-utero children at risk, as the disease can transfer from mother to baby through the placenta (known as congenital syphilis). The consequences for babies are severe: About 40 percent of babies born to women with untreated syphilis are stillborn or die as a newborn, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention reports. Others suffer from bone damage, anemia and nerve problems causing blindness or deafness, among other complications.
But the disease is easily treatable, assuming patients know they have it and receive care. So doctors have asked for more funding to support testing, tracking and treatment.
Alas, as part of last year’s debt limit showdown, Republicans pushed for, and Democrats ultimately capitulated to, large cuts to government spending, including to public health programs for sexually transmitted diseases. The actual funding levels have been in limbo, as Congress has been unable to pass a budget for the current fiscal year.
Legislative gridlock has also shortchanged the Special Supplemental Nutrition Program for Women, Infants, and Children, known as WIC. Research has found that prenatal participation in WIC has led to better birth outcomes and fewer infant deaths. But with no budget agreement several months into the current fiscal year, WIC funding has stayed flat at last year’s level. This is inadequate to cover all eligible applicants this year given higher-than-expected participation rates and food costs.
In the coming months, if no increase in funding passes, pregnant and postpartum women and young children could end up on waitlists for the first time in 25 years, according to the Center on Budget and Policy Priorities. While it is tempting to blame “Congress” for this outcome, the greater obstacle is House Republicans, who have explicitly tried to reduce WIC funding.
Finally, there’s the elephant in the room: the Dobbs decision, championed by conservatives, which has enabled abortion bans around the country. While these bans have forced more unintended pregnancies to be carried to term, they have also jeopardized wanted pregnancies — even those that might be considered less complicated.
That’s because experienced obstetricians are fleeing red states because of fears of legal liability and restrictions on their ability to provide needed care. States with abortion bans likewise saw the number of applicants for OB/GYN residencies drop more than 10 percent in 2023, the Association of American Medical Colleges reports.
“Fewer providers will mean less access to prenatal care, to say nothing of the restrictions those providers face when it comes to providing certain kinds of care,” said Dana Suskind, co-director of the University of Chicago’s TMW Center for Early Learning + Public Health.
There are some encouraging counterexamples to this broad trend. For example, most states have now taken up a federal option to extend postpartum Medicaid coverage. (Of course, that only helps those who aren’t erroneously purged from Medicaid rolls.)
Still, politicians who call themselves pro-life should be passing more policies to support lives at all ages, including those in utero. Doing so would not only abide by their moralizing rhetoric; it would also support their stated concerns about budget deficits. Each dollar spent on prenatal nutrition and other maternal care offers a great return on investment by reducing spending on government services further down the line.
Something you’d never guess from any of their actual policy choices.
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