For some time now, Mississippi’s leaders have pushed restrictive abortion laws as proof that it wants to make Mississippi the safest place for children in the nation, a place where even children yet to be born are afforded state protection.
But when it comes to children who are already born, it is a claim Mississippi cannot make. In truth, there is perhaps no more dangerous state for a living child under a year of age than Mississippi. In 2020, 293 Mississippi children died before reaching their first birthday, an infant mortality of 8.27 babies per 1,000 births – the highest rate in the nation and far higher than the national rate of 5.6. If Mississippi were a nation, its infant mortality rate would rank higher than 81 countries, according to the CIA World Factbook for the year 2020.
There is, as it turns out, something two of the most powerful people in the state — House Speaker Philip Gunn and Gov. Tate Reeves — despise more than legal abortions: Medicaid.
Medicaid — a federal and state program — provides uninsured mothers up to a year of health care coverage for their children up to age 1, but Mississippi currently provides mothers just two months of Medicaid coverage after a child’s birth.
For Mississippi, one of the 12 states that has refused to expand Medicaid to low-wage earners under the Affordable Care Act of 2010, that means many infants and their mothers go without access to health care at an age when they are most vulnerable.
During the past two years, there has been an effort in the legislature to extend that care to the full 12 months of coverage. This year, the prospects seemed particularly favorable, with the Senate approving Senate Bill 2033 by a 46-5 vote. Despite the overwhelming support for the bill, Gunn let the bill die in the House. There has been some effort to return the bill for a House vote, but Gunn remains unwilling, telling The Associated Press that he wanted no part of anything that would further expand Medicaid in Mississippi.
The extended postpartum care would cost little, and while not every Mississippi child who dies before their first birthday could be saved by having this health care coverage, it is the best, most obvious and least costly way to improve accessibility to health care for infants. In fact, five of Mississippi’s top medical associations sent a letter to Gunn in February saying as much.
The opposition to Medicaid expansion, whatever form it takes, is at this point purely ideological. In the states where Medicaid expansion has been in place for up to 12 years now, it’s not been proven to have wrecked state budgets (an early argument against expansion) but has, in fact, created jobs, ensured the survival of rural hospitals who are endangered by higher rates of uncompensated care and, most importantly, improved the health of millions of Americans.
In Mississippi, the consequences of withholding Medicaid expansion is measured in deaths, some of them little children.
For those politicians such as Gunn who espouse the moral necessity of banning abortions, it’s an especially hypocritical position to take.
The Dispatch Editorial Board is made up of publisher Peter Imes, columnist Slim Smith, managing editor Zack Plair and senior newsroom staff.
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