Tyrone Turner / DCist/WAMU
About once a month, Fatima Lazaro makes her way to a healthcare clinic not too far from her home in Prince George’s County. She signs in at the front desk then walks into a back room where she checks her own blood pressure. After jotting it down in a journal, she sits and waits for a nurse practitioner to call her name.
Lazaro is about 32 weeks pregnant with a baby girl. She says she hasn’t landed on a name yet, though she and her boyfriend are leaning towards either Sophia or Paloma, which means dove in Spanish.
“But we’re still completely undecided. I’ve heard a lot of parents have names in mind. And when it comes down to the moment, [then] it’s completely different,” says Lazaro, who was born in Mexico.
This will be Lazaro’s first time giving birth, and she’s opted to join a support group for pregnant women. However, because she’s a recipient of the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals (known as DACA), she wasn’t eligible for federally funded health insurance aside from emergency Medicaid. That made her a little more worried about taking care of her child, she says, in addition to the costs.
But this past July, Maryland enacted the Healthy Babies Equity Act. It’s a law that allows all pregnant people with an income of up to 250 percent of the federal poverty level – regardless of their immigration status – to become eligible for free health care coverage as soon as they know they’re pregnant. Once it took effect, Lazaro says staff at the...
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