Today’s Chronicle has an editorial addressing prenatal care in Houston:
As the Chronicle’s Melanie Markley reported last week, the combination of inaccessible preventive health services and rising infant mortality rates has local health providers worried. The rise in infant deaths, an important measure of a civilization’s functionality and moral health, should reinforce warnings that major structural changes need to be made in the way basic health services are delivered.
However, a letter to the editor today took exception with the Chronicle‘s coverage of this story:
The Chronicle’s Nov. 30 article on prenatal care, “AN URGENT NEED / Some face a long wait for crucial prenatal care” was a very one-sided article. A large majority of the clinics in Houston had short waits of seven to 10 days and only a few had longer waits. But that isn’t what the headline said.
And did the Chronicle check out how long a private paying patient has to wait? Believe me, private patients don’t get seen on the same day.
And, it isn’t even necessary for them to be seen any sooner than seven to 10 days! Normal pregnancy prenatal care is not an emergency.
AMY BETH OSBORN
Cypress
The irony here is that the Chronicle editors are big supporters of abortion, and abortion is, without a doubt, a much bigger cause of infant mortality than any wait to get into a city or county clinic.
