According to a new report, the United States has the highest first-day death rate in the industrialized world. Addressing this and related problems will require comprehensive efforts to reduce pervasive economic, social, and health disparities.

In the United States, an estimated 11,300 babies die each year on the day they are born, according to anew report from Save the Children. The United States has the highest first-day death rate in the industrialized world, and given its large population it has 50 percent more first-day deaths than all other industrialized countries combined. The alarming report has clear implications for U.S. policy, particularly the importance of investing in and expanding the reach of programs like Medicaid and Title X that make affordable pregnancy-related care and family planning services available to millions of women who are otherwise unable to obtain such care.

First-day deaths have many contributing factors, according to the report, including preterm, unplanned, and teen births. One in eight U.S. babies—a total of over half a million births each year—are born prematurely, and U.S. preterm births rank second only to Cyprus in the industrialized world. The report also notes that half of all U.S. pregnancies are unintended and that the U.S. adolescent birth rate is the highest among industrialized countries—with teenage mothers tending to be poorer, less educated, and receiving less prenatal care than older mothers.

Despite the most aggressive push yet, anti-choice legislators failed in their attempt to force poor women to give birth by cutting off abortion funding. Why? Because they hate birth control.

Imagine the thought of restricting abortion access for poor people and then helping them get birth control on top of that! How horrible! 

This is how government should be.

A draft of the resolution was first brought to the Board of Health by Dr. Schewel a couple of months ago after gaining interest through her work with WMF. Initially, Dr. Schewel’s pledge only included the issue of abortion coverage but, she says, “They were so outraged about threats to public family planning services that they wanted to expand to include that issue.”

“We had no conversations about personal feelings about abortion and family planning because we’re here as servants of public health and so our personal beliefs are irrelevant, so they embraced it,” she told me after a press event on the resolution held Friday afternoon. “Cities are where we see the impact of state and federal policies. We see them here on the ground, the frontline. We see the impact on our city streets, in our city health centers, in our day care centers, everywhere.”