The League of Women Voters of Virginia supports HB1398 which forms the Fetal and Infant Mortality Review Team. Its purpose is to decrease the incidence of preventable fetal and infant deaths. The Virginia Department of Health reports that the average infant mortality rate in Virginia was 5.8 infant deaths per 1,000 live births with the highest county rate of 12.6. The data obtained by the Fetal and Infant Mortality Review Team will be invaluable in understanding how and where infant mortality occurs. With this knowledge, targeted interventions can be implemented to decrease the incidence of preventable fetal and infant deaths in Virginia. We urge you to support HB1398.

HB1398: This bill has 13 pages of exclusions and then two pages about what will supposedly be tracked. This indicates to me that a far better use of taxpayer money to track fetal, maternal, and infant mortality would be to look at existing records rather than adding yet more administrative state. Also, a glaring omission is abortion, which does cause both fetal and maternal death and should be included in all such data reviews.