By: President Obama’s Budget Request for Women and Girls in the US Promising, But Still Insufficient

Fri, 12 Feb 2010 16:10:41 +0000

[...] As we reported last week, the long fiscal year 2011 budgetary process has begun with the release of the President’s budget request to Congress, which totals $3.8 trillion – the largest budget ever requested by a President. While the President announced a freeze on the overall funding levels for domestic spending, some programs did receive modest increases, but still not enough to meet the health needs of low-income women and girls. The Title X program, which provides essential family planning services to low-income women who may not have access to these services otherwise, received a $9.9 million dollar increase from FY2010 to a total of $327.4 million. In fiscal year 2010, the Maternal and Child Health Block Grant was flat-funded, but this year it received an increase of $11 million dollars for this vital program, which is very encouraging, yet, additional funding is needed so that low-income women in the United States can also have healthy pregnancies. The United States is ranked 41st in terms of maternal mortality, which translates into one in 4,800 women with a lifetime risk of dying from pregnancy. By contrast, fewer than one in 16,400 in the 10 top-ranked industrialized countries will die from pregnancy-related causes. So clearly there is much more that can be done for women living in one of the wealthiest and developed countries in the world. [...]

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By: President Obama’s Budget Request for Women and Girls in the US Promising, But Still Insufficient