Posted by In yesterday’s Montgomery Advertiser, there was an editorial about the latest report on this subject. Alabama’s Infant Mortality rate is 9.5 per 1000 live births, while nationally, the rate is 6.7.
A copy of the report (pdf) can be found at the State Department of Public Health as well as a list by County of infant mortality rates (pdf).
To summarize: the child most likely not to see a birthday cake is black, had a low birth weight, does not have health coverage, has a sibling less than two, a teenage mother who smokes and was one of a multiple birth.
While the recent ALLKIDS expansion and Medicaid should address part of this problem, still a long way to go.
This is a policy question you might want to ask a candidate for office about. Also, ponder what you can do outside of government as some problems are not amendable to legislation.
Just remember too, as this doctor in South Africa tells us, things could be much worse.
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Infants are not lives we need to give up because of various political questions, political confrontations, health-care debates, Blue Cross/Blue Shield oligopolies. This post will remain mild in its defamation of one party or the other – and focus on governing.
Medicaid in Alabama, while yes, an unfunded federal mandate – should be open to all who need it. I know Medicare is not loved by all seniors due to government bureaucrats and TPS reports getting in the way of good health-care, but it is a model of government-purchased health-care.
So, if the model works (however ineffectively it may be) for seniors, I’m sure in Alabama, well, I would hope the legislature would put aside partisan hack differences just once and Republicans would let a tax increase happen to fund pre-natal and infant health-care so we can lower our rate of younguns falling victim to what is preventable.
Not sure if I would want a child in that situation to survive. Are we going to decrease the infant mortality rate so that a destitute teen mother of twins can be burdened with another unhealthy baby to raise badly? Perhaps our money would be better spent in educational and career programs for low income families.
I think this also is attributable to a failure of abstinence programs that don’t give sexually active teens a safety net for their mistakes. Teach teens the truth about sexuality or you risk more of the same.
But, if you teach teens about safety, that means you have to teach sex ed. in schools, government paid-for schools, because sex is a bad word…and we’re on the edge of the rabbit hole – FYI.
I wonder who’s going to make the final push?
If every child deserves the right to life and all contraception is also a dirty word, shouldn’t those children you talk about being born to a destitute teen mother be taken care of if the parents, grandparents, or whomever can’t bear the responsibility?
That’s a cold statement Jeremy and the fact is that what you want in this circumstance should not mean jack squat. I have worked in low income communities and I know there are plenty of kids who have that type of upbringing and turn into embittered, even violent adults but there are plenty more who rise above that life. It is definitely harder for someone to succeed from that background than someone born to a wealthy family in Mountain Brook or somewhere like that, but that doesn’t mean their life is worth any less or that success is impossible.
The statistical chance of that child having a great life may not be that high, but even if the chance was .0001%, I still think that Alabama has a responsibility to provide those who cannot afford it with the tools required for survival. I do not see how anyone who shares my pro-life beliefs on abortion can also be ok with a baby dying in America because of inadequate or nonexistent medical care.
That said, abstinence only education is not smart. Avoiding sex before marriage is the ideal but denying kids the information needed to stay safe if they do have sex just makes the consequences for the behavior that much worse.
I’m sorry, why is this a policy question?
Another significant problem that would not be easily addressed by legislation is the lack of easy access to medical facilities. That is, there are several pretty large chunks of territory in south Alabama without any comprehensive medical centers to speak of.
This baby is not dying because of inadaqute or non-existent medical care. It is dying because teen mothers give birth to low birth weight babies. “Very low-birthweight babies (less than 3 1/3 pounds) are more than 100 times as likely to die, and moderately low-birthweight babies (between 3 1/3 and 5½ pounds) are more than 5 times as likely to die, in their first year of life than normal-weight babies (2).” – March Of Dimes.
It’s a policy question if we truly want to adhere to a “culture of life”? It would seem to be problematic for someone who believes that all life is sacred (even the unborn) and who believes that the government should adopt policies that foster a respect for all life to argue that government has no role to play in trying to reduce infant mortality.
[ It’s a policy question if we truly want to adhere to a “culture of life”? It would seem to be problematic for someone who believes that all life is sacred (even the unborn) and who believes that the government should adopt policies that foster a respect for all life to argue that government has no role to play in trying to reduce infant mortality. ]
I certainly never made any of these three claims.
1. This is undefinable and unmeasurable.
2. It’s not.
3. It shouldn’t.
SteveO, this is a policy question because our government has decided infant mortality is a problem to be fixed, just like roads and banditry.
Now, whether this a proper function of government, such as quarantine laws to control plague is an interesting question but could be electoral suicide.