The city of St. Louis is considering where to reroute money appropriated for abortion support after Missouri’s attorney general challenged its allocation in court — and services related to maternal health and medical debt forgiveness are high on the list.
Casey Millburg, the mayor’s policy director, detailed the proposed uses in a committee hearing yesterday, which would include $500,000 toward maternal health support and $800,000 to medical debt forgiveness.
Milburg said the money for maternal health support would allow the city’s Department of Health to build a more robust suite of services to lower the city’s abysmal maternal mortality rate.
Missouri is one of the most dangerous places to give birth; Black mothers in particular are three to four times more likely to die within a year of pregnancy, according to the Missouri Pregnancy Associated Mortality review.
“The intended approach is to utilize a combination of education, screening and treatment to support moms and babies, [and] maternal health education workshops for fathers…” Millburg said.
As far as medical debt forgiveness, Millburg said $800,000 could be leveraged to wipe approximately $100,000,000 in medical debt for potentially 20,000 city residents.
“There is an organization that has a model that we’ve been investigating where they’re able to essentially buy for pennies on the dollar medical debt of individuals who are residents of the city,” Millburg said.
After Missouri issued a near total abortion ban, the city created the Reproductive Equity Fund to provide support for childcare, transportation and other needs for people with unwanted pregnancies. It sent the Department of Health $1 million in ARPA funds to doll out as grants for “logistical support,” as well as another $250,000 for the department to oversee the fund.
Former Missouri Attorney General Eric Schmitt sued the city mere hours after Mayor Tishaura Jones signed the bill creating the fund, calling it “blatantly illegal.” Earlier this year, a judge partially agreed with him.
St. Louis Circuit Court Judge Jason Sengheiser granted a preliminary injunction in June that prohibited the city from granting money to four organizations that sought funding for indirect costs of abortion care. Sengheiser’s ruling in effect rendered the city’s funding for programs inoperative.
Now a new bill sponsored by Ward 10 Alderwoman Shameem Clark Hubbard would reallocate the money, although there’s still several rounds of the legislative process the bill would have to go through to take effect.
Parts of the bill creating the Reproductive Equity Fund, now Ordinance 71554, were not affected by Schmitt’s suit, including a section that appropriated $500,000 to support organizations that already provide reproductive health services such as doula care and lactation support. The bill also dedicated $1.6 million for COVID-19 testing and vaccine incentives.
After the hearing yesterday, abortion advocates were generally in favor of the parts that needed to be reworked. But they minced no words in their displeasure with why it had to be changed in the first place.
“Time and again the politicians that make up our anti-abortion supermajority and arms of the state have weaponized their power to thwart St. Louisans rights to democracy,” Mallory Schwarz, executive director of Abortion Action Missouri, said in a statement.
“While I’m frustrated that politics prevented us from helping St. Louisans with logistical support for needed abortion care, this reallocation will still center pregnant St. Louisans,” former Alderwoman Annie Rice, who had sponsored the bill that created the fund, said in a statement. “In a state with abysmal maternal mortality rates, this is vital work by our local government.”
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