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Memphis’s Bad News: The Infant Mortality Rate

Meanwhile, the Memphis school system is spending enormous amounts of money to bar code their students.

TV Review | 'Babyland'

By Neil Genzlinger

Every war has them: a few searing images caught on film that come to epitomize the conflict. There’s a war going on in Memphis right now, and a third of the way into "Babyland," Friday’s installment of "20/20" on ABC, there is such an image: workers with a steam shovel burying tiny coffins in a mass grave.

The program is about infant mortality. The United States, we are told, fares poorly among industrialized nations in its survival rate for infants, and the problem is particularly acute in Memphis. "A baby dies in Memphis every 43 hours," Elizabeth Vargas, who reports the segment, says.

This program provides fuel for several fires. The mortality rate, attributable primarily to premature births, is especially high among low-income blacks. (That mass grave, the burial of last resort, is in a public cemetery whose nickname gives the program its title.) Many of the women who lose babies are young and unmarried, and you can guess the resulting lines of argument.

But rather than dwell on these familiar and polarizing debates, the program commendably focuses on grass-roots efforts to address the problem.

There is Terry Drumwright, a white woman from the wealthy suburbs who, through a program at her church, is trying to make a difference (and walk that fine line between assistance and condescension) by working one on one with a pregnant black teenager. There is Dr. Linda Moses, who is from these poor neighborhoods and has now come back to practice there.

“How much of your job is basic education?” Ms. Vargas asks her.

She answers bluntly, “All of my job is basic education.”

The program alludes to a bigger picture — of poverty, of race-based government indifference — that makes these personal crusades feel like lost causes. But the mere fact that someone is making them is wonderful to see.

20/20

Babyland

ABC, Friday night at 10, Eastern and Pacific times; 9, Central time.



— Neil Genzlinger
New York Times
2008-08-21
http://www.nytimes.com/2008/08/22/arts/television/22infa.html?emc=tnt&tntemail0=y

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