URGENT--Action Needed--SCHIP Unborn Child Amendment

Within the next couple of days the Senate will vote on an important amendment to SCHIP.

Senator Orrin Hatch (R-Utah) has introduced an amendment to the SCHIP authorization bill that would codify in the law provisions currently included in regulations that allow states to interpret the word "child" to include the period from conception to birth. This move would allow states to retain choice and flexibility in how best to provide essential health services to pregnant women and children. Access to prenatal care will allow more children to be born in good health, without a need for more extensive and expensive medical intervention.

Please call or e-mail your senators asking them to support the Hatch Unborn Child Amendment to the SCHIP Authorization Bill. Call the Capitol Switchboard at (202)224-3121 or find your Senators contact information at www.congress.org ( http://www.congress.org/ ).

Attached you will find background information on The Unborn Child Amendment and a Letter on SCHIP from Bishop William Murphy, Chairman of the USCCB Committee on Domestic Justice and Human Development, to the Senate.

BACKGROUND

SCHIP UNBORN CHILD AMENDMENT 1/28/09
There are two ways pregnant women and their unborn children might benefit from the SCHIP program. One is to extend coverage specifically to pregnant women themselves. That is now an option for states under a waiver, and it is already codified in the SCHIP reauthorization. But it is odd to refer to an adult pregnant woman as a "child," and more substantively the coverage has two negative features: it will be covered by the same restrictions regarding immigrants as other federal health programs, and in 17 states that have state-funded Medicaid abortions it will automatically expand coverage for abortion as well.

Here is what the unborn child option achieves that the "pregnant woman" coverage does not: Because the coverage is in the name of the soon-to-be-born child, who upon birth will be a citizen, it provides urgently needed care for both mother and child regardless of the mother's immigrant status. This is no doubt why 14 states, including liberal states like California and Massachusetts, are using this option NOW to provide care for many pregnant women and mothers who would otherwise be denied any help because of restrictive rule on health care for immigrants. It is, to say the least, a false and stupid "economy" to deny prenatal care in such cases, creating a situation in which the new citizen will be born sickly or premature and require an intensive care nursery or other corrective action, which of course the government will pay for because the child is now a citizen.

The "unborn child" rule will be supported by most Republicans because they respond to the idea of the child before birth receiving medical care; it should be supported by most Democrats because it helps the neediest women and children in our society who the SCHIP program will reach in no other way.

Bishop Murphy's letters to Congress can be found here.