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Family planning services will be available for free to low-income women across Maryland by early next year.
Women with incomes of roughly $22,000 or less annually — up to 200 percent of the federal poverty line — will be eligible to receive free family planning services, providing everything from breast cancer screenings to pelvic exams, tests for sexually transmitted diseases, and pregnancy counseling beginning Jan. 1, state officials announced Wednesday.
“If you’re making that much money a year, you’re generally barely making ends meet, so you cut corners,” said Del. Heather Mizeur, D-Montgomery, who helped co-sponsor the bill. “One of the things you might cut is going to the doctors and getting these exams you don’t have the resources for.”
Nearly 35,000 women will be eligible for help and will save the state between $20 million and $40 million through reductions in unwanted pregnancies, officials estimate.
And when women decide to have a child, they will have resources available to them to facilitate a healthy birth, Mizeur said, reducing the number of low birth weights and improving the health of both mothers and their babies.
At 6.7 deaths per 1,000 infants in 2010, Maryland has a higher rate of infant mortality than the national average, according to a recent report from the state.
It gets worse in Prince George’s County, where the rate jumps to 9.0 deaths. Among the county’s black residents, the rate is 11.1 per 1,000.
County Executive Rushern Baker said the initiative would help solve a great need for better access to quality health care in Prince George’s.
“Health care is not a second-tier priority in this county,” Baker said. “Ultimately, if we want better education, we have to have healthier citizens, healthier kids and healthier births.”
The measure will have the most impact in Prince George’s and Montgomery counties and Baltimore City — the state’s three major population centers. As many as one-third of the applicants may be from Prince George’s County alone, Mizeur said.
Applications are already available to women who want to receive care as soon as Jan. 1, she said.
