Karen Authier, Guest Blogger, is the Executive Director of Nebraska Children’s Home Society (NCHS), a statewide agency with 11 offices in 10 cities across the state of Nebraska.  NCHS provides an array of children and family programs including pregnancy, parenting, adoption and post-adoption services; foster care; in-home services to children and families; and early childhood programming. www.nchs.org

Nebraska Children’s Home Society has worked with pregnant women for 116 years.  On a daily basis women contact us to ask for help with unplanned pregnancies.  Our caseworkers assure each woman that we value her as a woman and as a mother and that we value her unborn child.  We work with her to help her face the reality of her situation and make a responsible plan for parenting or adoption. We do not refer for abortion.  Over half of the women served develop a parenting plan; less than half place for adoption.

When a woman comes to us for help, one of our top priorities is to connect her to a resource for prenatal care.  That referral is consistent with our message that both she and the baby are very special people and that the mother is responsible for taking care of both herself and the baby so that both are healthy.  Fortunately, most women have had coverage for the costs of prenatal care either through a private insurer or Medicaid.  We do not charge any fees for pregnancy services or adoption.  We can provide these services at no charge because of the generosity of donors who have supported our work for over a century.  If the woman has no health insurance or inadequate health insurance, we pay for prenatal care.  We have not yet determined what we will do if the legislature does not restore coverage for prenatal care for low income women.

Perhaps fewer women will seek our assistance.  Many of our referrals come from physicians.  With no prenatal care available, many pregnant women will not see a physician and the referrals will not occur.  Perhaps more women will make the decision to terminate their pregnancies if they face continuing a pregnancy without medical care.

There are some predictions we can make.  More women will deliver pre-term low birthweight infants.  Some of those infants will not survive; others will survive with life long disabilities.

Our caseworkers already have their work cut out for them as they work to convince women that it is important to obtain prenatal care.  Now we are left to say that their life and their child’s life may depend on prenatal care, but it is not available to them.  I hope that common sense prevails and that the state makes a decision to insure that all babies born in this state have the opportunity to survive and thrive through access to prenatal care.

In the words of Kate Douglas:  Every child born into the world is a new thought of God, an ever fresh and radiant possibility – Kate Douglas

This entry was posted on Thursday, March 11th, 2010 at 4:40 pm and is filed under Common Sense. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.