Blow opens up his column by noting that, according to the World Bank, the U.S. has the highest infant mortality rate of the 33 countries that the International Monetary Fund (IMF) classifies as "advanced economies."

He notes that this regrettable reality is due, at least in large part, to the fact that "...premature births--a leading cause of infant mortality as well as long-term developmental disabilities--began to rise in the 1990s..." in the U.S. However, Blow also points out that, in 2008, the National Center for Health Statistics reported the first two-year decline in premature births in the past 30 years.

As a quote in Blow's column from March of Dimes President Dr. Jennifer L. Howse tells the audience, her organization commenced a multimillion-dollar premature birth campaign in 2003 focusing upon awareness and education. "The policy changes and programs to prevent preterm birth that our volunteers and staff have worked so hard to bring about are starting to pay off.”

So, just as it was being reported that some headway was being made in addressing the problem, along comes a Republican-controlled House which is now proposing a budget which will effectively eviscerate those positive results. As Blow bullet-points it...

...The budget proposes: • $50 million in cuts to the Maternal and Child Health Block Grant that “supports state-based prenatal care programs and services for children with special needs.” • $1 billion in cuts to programs at the National Institutes of Health that support “lifesaving biomedical research aimed at finding the causes and developing strategies for preventing preterm birth.” • Nearly $1 billion in cuts to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention for its preventive health programs, including to its preterm birth studies. This is the same budget in which House Republicans voted to strip all federal financing for Planned Parenthood.

It is savagely immoral and profoundly inconsistent... ...How is this humane?



Blow saves the slam-dunk on the GOP for the last two sentences of his column today...



...Think about that the next time you hear Republican representatives tout their “pro-life” bona fides. Think about that the next time someone uses the heinous term “baby killer.”