Babies Will Pay for This One

Gov. Pete Wilson has gained a pyrrhic victory in his ongoing, cold and shortsighted effort to deny state-funded pregnancy care to illegal immigrants. In a case with many legal layers, a state appeals panel decided this week that the Wilson administration can go forward and bring the subsidies to a halt, which will affect about 70,000 women statewide.

Still to come is the panel’s ruling on the governor’s main appeal, which seeks to overturn a lower court ruling in Oakland last month that Wilson cannot unilaterally deny the care. The governor must wait, the lower court ruled, until Atty. Gen. Janet Reno produces uniform rules for the states for verifying an applicant’s eligibility for aid.

Under Wilson’s approach, Californians will be paying for a pound of cure rather than an ounce of prevention. What, for example, is the practical effect of this action, beyond making the governor appear tough on illegal immigration? Study after study has shown that mothers who do not receive prenatal care are more likely to give birth to sickly, low-weight infants. These children--American citizens by birth--will be delivered at California hospitals and clinics, at sometimes staggering intensive-care costs that are eventually passed on to all state residents. The poor start they receive may follow them throughout their lives in the form of higher health care costs.

The clinics that will no longer receive state reimbursements for the care of pregnant illegal immigrant women won’t all turn them away. Many will try to stretch a smaller pot of money to deal with all their pregnant patients, legal and illegal, which means less care for everyone.

And what happens when a doctor delivers the baby of a woman who has had little or no prenatal care? The doctor has little or no health care history, no idea of what complications might have occurred during the pregnancy or might occur during delivery. That means the whole procedure is likely to be more expensive because the delivery involves higher risk.

That, governor, is no way to treat a baby.