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'Healthcare' or Family Intervention?: Low-Income Mothers Singled Out for Home Visits
WASHINGTON - November 12 -
GWENDOLYN MINK
Mink is co-editor of the two-volume Poverty in the United States: An Encyclopedia of History, Politics and Policy and author of Welfare's End. She has been following various aspects of healthcare reform legislation.
She said today: "The House bill includes a section calling for home visits by nurses to poor pregnant families and poor families with young children -- to provide behavioral and interpersonal guidance for self-improvement. This provision is NOT about the delivery of medical services. As the bill states, one goal of home visits by nurses is to make the poor economically 'self-sufficient' and less 'dependent' on public assistance.
"In addition to providing for social, personal, and family interventions by visiting nurses, the provision calls for 'increasing birth intervals' in low-income families -- fertility control. Why is a healthcare bill providing for subjective social intervention into low-income families? The new abortion funding restriction impairs the right of all women to terminate pregnancies. Section 1713 encroaches the right of low-income women to choose to bear children on their own terms." The relevant sections are available in PDF at Mink's webpage .
GWENDOLYN MINK
Mink is co-editor of the two-volume Poverty in the United States: An Encyclopedia of History, Politics and Policy and author of Welfare's End. She has been following various aspects of healthcare reform legislation.
She said today: "The House bill includes a section calling for home visits by nurses to poor pregnant families and poor families with young children -- to provide behavioral and interpersonal guidance for self-improvement. This provision is NOT about the delivery of medical services. As the bill states, one goal of home visits by nurses is to make the poor economically 'self-sufficient' and less 'dependent' on public assistance.
"In addition to providing for social, personal, and family interventions by visiting nurses, the provision calls for 'increasing birth intervals' in low-income families -- fertility control. Why is a healthcare bill providing for subjective social intervention into low-income families? The new abortion funding restriction impairs the right of all women to terminate pregnancies. Section 1713 encroaches the right of low-income women to choose to bear children on their own terms." The relevant sections are available in PDF at Mink's webpage .
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Show AllThis is absolutely stunning! I was a public health nurse in a rural area of Virginia for several years in the early 1990's. We did home visits for a variety of reasons including visits to pregnant women and new mothers. However, it was always for a medical problem or a follow-up to a medical problem. Nurses are not social workers and should not be "providing social, personal ad family interventions."! In fact, it is very important to keep these medical servies and social services separate. People using the public health services are already wary and rightfully so of "social interference" by state workers and in order to provide adequate health care, nurses need to stay above that suspicion. As an aside, contrary to the tone of the wording of this section of the bill, I never met a person, during home visits, clinics, TB screenings or any other duties as a public health nurse, who was purposefully taking advantage of public assistance. I was always trying to encourage people to participate in our services---Oh how things have changed!