Missouri finally helps new mothers who need health care. But what took so long? | Opinion

Let’s give credit where it’s due: Missouri Gov. Mike Parson last week did a wonderful thing by signing a new law that extends Medicaid health care coverage for postpartum mothers.

We can’t help but temper the praise a bit: The bill should have passed much earlier than it did. In February, we called on state leaders in Jefferson City to pass the bill — and not to encumber it with unnecessary antiabortion rights efforts that would have hobbled it — and that has finally happened. That’s good news for families across the state.

The law is absolutely necessary. As advocates pointed out during legislative debates earlier this year, roughly 60 Missouri women die every year either while pregnant or within a year after giving birth — giving the state the 12th-highest maternal mortality rate in the country.

Can those numbers be reduced? We believe so. A recent report released by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention last fall showed that 80% of pregnancy-related deaths are preventable.

Previously, though, postpartum mothers in Missouri could receive only 60 days of Medicaid assistance after giving birth. That meant that doctors had a short time frame to diagnose a range of maternal medical conditions — hypertension, diabetes, depression — that can emerge during the months after a child is born.

That status quo clearly hasn’t been sufficient.

“It’s almost like we treat pregnancy as though, well this is just a time for celebration, which it is,” Tracy Russell, executive director of Nurture KC, told The Star last year. But that all too often comes at the expense of treating “the trauma on the body and the mind that can occur during the course of pregnancy and parenthood.”

Now, however, more of those women will be eligible for a year of coverage. Officials estimate that 4,600 new mothers in the state of Missouri will benefit.

Getting to this point wasn’t easy, however.

A similar bill failed during the 2022 session of the GOP-controlled Missouri General Assembly. (Kansas expanded Medicaid coverage to new mothers that same year.) It finally passed this year, thanks to a coalition of women senators on both sides of the political aisle. That effort was fraught with obstacles: Conservative lawmakers added a provision to the original legislation to deny postpartum Medicaid coverage to patients whose pregnancies end because of abortion.

The provision was cruel on its face. Whatever your feelings about abortion, the health of actual Missouri mothers should never be held hostage to a right-wing crusade against the women who don’t want to be mothers.

It was also bad law. Experts said that requirement probably would have violated federal rules for the program, which mandate that post-pregnancy coverage shall be available “regardless of the reason the pregnancy ends.”

Thankfully, the antiabortion rights provision was stripped before the bill made its way to Parson’s desk.

Let’s be clear, though: The new law will be “pro-life” in the very best sense of the term.

“Pro-child policies should include maternal health,” Kansas City pediatrician Dena K. Hubbard wrote for The Star last year. Postpartum coverage creates “access to physical and mental health care services during a critical time that directly impacts mothers, babies and families.”

It would be great if doing the right thing for Missouri mothers and their families hadn’t been such an arduous journey. We’ll never know how many women suffered because the legislature dragged its heels for a year.

Now, though, the bill is law. Good. That’s cause for celebration — and, hopefully, the beginning of more and better efforts to help new families in the Show-Me State.