Jackson Free Press

In a state with so many restrictions on sexual education and abortion, ostensibly to protect the health of women, the conventional wisdom should hold that Mississippi's pregnancy statistics should be stellar.

But in fact, Mississippi was recently ranked the worst state in the nation to have a baby—despite being number one in cost of living and infant-care costs.

While the Legislature wastes taxpayer dollars defending a law designed to close the state's only abortion clinic to the Supreme Court, they've barely acknowledged the gaping hole in pregnancy care in the state. Mississippi has the highest infant death rate in the country. We also hold the last-place spot for the most low birth-weight and preterm births.

These statistics are at least in part a result of bad policy and politicking. In a recent change of heart, the Legislature allotted $1 million to the Mississippi Department of Health to combat our infant mortality rate. Money is one thing; however, policy is quite another. The state department of health is making the best of its new funds to partner with large organizations and businesses to educate women about services, options and their choices as a mother-to-be, as well as asking hospitals to create policies to end early elective births that can lead to pre-term births and under-developed infants.

Additionally, the African American infant mortality rate was more than twice that for whites. Access remains a primary issue in the pregnancy care realm, and getting mothers in rural counties proper pregnancy care is not easy. But we need to do it anyway. There are only 44 hospitals in the entire state that a mother can give birth in. We have a small amount of midwives to counteract the lack of facilities. The state's leadership, meanwhile, continues to keep the Affordable Care Act as far away as possible, a policy that might improve almost every aspect of pregnancy for women—especially those with no health insurance or access to prenatal care.

The Mississippi Department of Health advocates for planned pregnancy, which should sound familiar, because organizations like Planned Parenthood have the same goal in mind.

A common thread runs through all of Mississippi's pregnancy problems: It's a woman's right, but she's not right to exercise it according to the policy that dictates her every move. Why is it so difficult to imagine a world in which a woman can have access to safe birth control, abortion services and pregnancy care all in her lifetime?

As we celebrate good ideas for Jackson and Mississippi in this birthday issue of the Jackson Free Press, leaders must realize that the solutions to most of what stands in the way of progress in our state starts with our women.