Wilson Acts to Bar Prenatal Care for Illegal Immigrants

Gov. Pete Wilson, renewing his drive to cut state benefits to illegal immigrants, proposed emergency regulations Friday to deny prenatal services each year to an estimated 70,000 pregnant women who are undocumented immigrants.

Widely criticized by health care advocates, Wilson’s action signals the end of a program approved by the Legislature in 1988 that has provided state-subsidized pregnancy checkups and other prenatal care for poor women who are illegal immigrants.

Hours later in Los Angeles, U.S. District Judge Mariana R. Pfaelzer refused a request to block the regulations and said Wilson has the authority to impose the restrictions as part of the new federal welfare law.

“Congress has decided that the states should deny health benefits to illegal aliens,” Pfaelzer said in a nine-page decision that is certain to embolden Wilson’s crusade to deny aid to illegal immigrants.

“This is a huge victory,” said Sean Walsh, a gubernatorial spokesman. “It essentially says the Congress and the American people’s voice will be heard and that activist groups who seek to thwart the will of the American people at every opportunity have been denied.”

Immigrant advocates were disappointed, said Mark Rosenbaum, legal director of the American Civil Liberties Union of Southern California.

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However, Rosenbaum predicted other legal assaults, including a possible challenge under constitutional guarantees of equal protection. “Denying prenatal care to citizen children is an open question that could be litigated,” he said.

The proposed regulations, expected to be approved by the state office of administrative law within 10 days, will become effective Dec. 1.

Rosenbaum and other civil rights activists had asked the federal court to block the state action, calling it a subterfuge designed to implement provisions of Proposition 187, the hotly contested 1994 ballot initiative that sought to make illegal immigrants ineligible for most public benefits.

Pfaelzer had issued an injunction earlier that prevented much of Proposition 187 from going into effect.

But the judge said in her ruling Friday that her injunction would not stop the governor from acting under the new federal welfare law. “The court’s injunction does not prohibit the implementation of any federal law,” she wrote.

The injunction, she noted, was based on her finding that much of Proposition 187 amounted to an unconstitutional usurpation of federal authority in immigration law. But now, she said, Congress has acted and decided that the states should deny health benefits to illegal immigrants.

The overhaul of the nation’s welfare system, signed into law Aug. 22 by President Clinton, bars states from providing nonemergency health benefits to illegal immigrants unless those services are approved by state legislatures after the passage of the federal law.

Under the 1988 law signed by Republican Gov. George Deukmejian, California has been subsidizing prenatal services to illegal immigrants. Federal Medicaid guidelines prohibit reimbursement of such care for illegal immigrants.

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The Legislature so far has taken no action to reinstate the prenatal aid program, which is financed exclusively by the state at an annual cost of about $69 million.

Wilson’s decision to end the program prompted a harsh reaction from many health groups.

They credit prenatal care--a regimen including regular checkups, nutrition supplements, counseling and fetal monitoring--with reducing mortality and illness rates for children and mothers and averting abnormalities and serious complications such as low birth-weight babies.

“We consider this to be extremely shortsighted public policy,” said Charlotte Newhart, chief administrative officer of the American College of Obstetricians and Gynecologists, California.

The aid cutoff is expected to hit hardest in Los Angeles County, home to the nation’s largest concentration of illegal immigrants. County hospitals and clinics now provide prenatal care to about 20,000 illegal immigrants, officials say.

“Ultimately, we’re creating a bigger burden on society than if we had provided the prenatal care to begin with,” said Irene Riley, chief of governmental relations for Los Angeles County. “We’re harming unprotected children who are new citizens.”

If children are born in the United States they automatically become citizens who are entitled to government services.

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For now, Riley said, county health officials plan to continue providing the aid unless the Board of Supervisors decides otherwise. As a result of Wilson’s action, she said, county taxpayers will have to pick up cost of more than $9 million a year.

Other health experts predicted that the governor’s action would cause fear to spread among the entire immigrant community and prompt many legal immigrants to shy away from seeking any kind of medical care, even immunizations for their U.S.-born children.

“This goes way beyond prenatal care [and will] have a broad effect on health care generally,” said Rodolfo Diaz, executive director of the Community Health Foundation of East Los Angeles, which serves a largely immigrant clientele.

Wilson has never disputed the preventive value of prenatal care, but has argued that it serves to lure illegal immigrants into the country, causing a drain on the state treasury.