Children were more likely to be born at risk of death, disability or chronic health problems in 1990 than a decade earlier, the Children's Defense Fund said Thursday.
The advocacy group said its study, based on federal health statistics, shows that "rapid progress on maternal and child health in the '60s and '70s was brought to a screeching halt by a decade of indifference."Seven percent of children born in 1990 had low birth weights, which puts them at higher risk of death or lingering health problems if they survive, the report said.
During the 1970s, the share of children born with low birth weights fell from 7.9 percent at the beginning of the decade to 6.9 percent at the end. After hovering at 6.8 percent during much of the 1980s, the percentage of babies with low birth weights began creeping up in 1987.
Carol Regan, director of the health division at CDF, blamed the rise in low birth weight babies on insufficient or a lack of prenatal care for many women. The study found that one out of every four babies born in 1990 was to a mother who did not receive early prenatal care.
"Far too many pregnant women are not getting access to doctors and far too many babies are born unhealthy, suffer and never reach their first birthday," said the fund's president, Marian Wright Edelman.
"Clearly, we failed pregnant women and children in the '80s and history will repeat itself in the '90s unless Americans demand a national health care system that puts women and children first," Edelman said.
The fund said a deteriorating health care system and deepening family poverty in the 1980s "exacted a tremendous cost in child suffering and death."
President Clinton was scheduled to address the fund's annual conference Thursday.