Hard to understand the reasoning behind this, because it is not only immoral but won’t save money…
PROVIDENCE –– Scrambling to close a massive budget deficit, Governor Carcieri has introduced plans to cut funding for 28 pregnant women enrolled in the state’s “payor of last resort” program for those who otherwise cannot afford health insurance.
“There is no greater place to put our resources … than in pregnancy,” testified Linda DiPalma, director of program services for the March of Dimes Foundation. She cited multiple reports that suggest access to quality health care for pregnant women leads to significantly higher birth weights, while reducing premature births.
The advocacy group Rhode Island Kids Count also suggested the projected cost savings are misleading. Without health-care coverage, the women would likely have no way to pay for their births, leaving the hospitals to pick up the tab.
“This means that the cost will be charged to uncompensated care, which ultimately is absorbed by the state,” reads testimony submitted by Kids Count policy analyst Jill K. Beckwith. “It makes more sense to allow women to access prenatal care through RIte Care to guard against expensive births that the state will ultimately pay more for in the end.”
Although prenatal care can’t prevent all cases of prematurity, good care can improve the odds of a healthy, uncomplicated birth and healthy baby. The Providence Journal has an excellent series about the burden on families and society when a baby needs intensive care. See The Price of Miracles.
Consider that a sick baby is likely to force a mother to quit work altogether and lose all her income. Prevention saves. If the well being of a mother and baby is not important in its own right, just look at the money. It’s pay now, or pay more later.
Revisiting another ingenious cost-cutting idea–sending seventeen-year-olds to the adult prison, a link to the Pawtucket Times here.
It doesn’t make economic sense to cut at the expense of children and youth.
Kmareka.com 
Your Governor Carcinogenic is really something special. Wotta (string of expletives). My governor is blind and he can see a lot more clearly than that moron.
The same people who oppose helping pregnant women and children because it costs too much, are the same people who have no qualms about locking up these children as they grow up. Even if a few dollars now actually save thousands of dollars down the road.
Somehow, the resources to help people are finite; the resources to lock them up are unlimited.
Prenatal care can’t prevent every problem, but a sick baby can easily run up millions of dollars in medical bills in the first few years. That’s leaving out the heartbreak and suffering. Investing in children is a safer bet than trusting that wealth will trickle down.
Yet another example of the statesmanship of our penny-wise pound
foolish governor. But then, we can’t raise taxes under any circum-
stances, can we? That would be (you supply the proper right-wing
adjective).