Children's crusader.

Mound Bayou, Mississippi 

L.C. Dorsey, a daughter of sharecroppers who has known hunger and pain herself, is not easily shocked. As the director of a community health center in the Mississippi Delta, she sees the ravages of poverty every day. Still, she was stunned when she heard. about a local seventeen-year-old who, not knowing she was pregnant, gave birth while taking a shower and buried her baby in a field.

Dorsey had just returned from a national conference when she was hit by the news from her own community. The next day she made it her business to sit down and talk about the signs of pregnancy with the young people from the area--some of them volunteers--who gather regularly at the sprawling Delta Health Center Dorsey runs in Mound Bayou.

"What should a person do if she has any of these symptoms?" Dorsey asked.

"Go to a doctor," said one of the teenagers.

"What if she has no money?"

"Tell somebody," another responded.

Exactly. "These are things we shouldn't have somebody go through alone," Dorsey said.

From Mound Bayou to Jackson, Mississippi, stories like the one that so moved L.C. Dorsey show how hard it is to reduce the rates of teenage pregnancy, poverty, and infant mortality. Mississippi has long been stuck in the statistical basement when it comes to health care for poor children. In 1989, one-third of its children lived in poverty--with an annual income of less than $12,675 per family of four.

Mississippi's problems are a legacy of the shameless neglect of its black population during the years before the civil-rights movement. Dorsey, who as a young woman worked on Mississippi's voter-registration drives, not only directs the Delta Health Center but also participates on the Presidential review panel for health-care reform. Never shy, she has kept her colleagues apprised of the day-to-day problems of health-care delivery, and the need to address the problem of racism as well as of medicine.

"The only thing that has changed in terms of racism is the sophistication of the racism," Dorsey says. "You don't have patients being carried into a clinic and having the doctor saying he's not going to treat them. Now you know before you go to the doctor that he doesn't take Medicaid"--which, in Mississippi, means he doesn't treat many black people.

Dorsey believes medical care is a right. Besides working with teenagers, she and her staff help women receive proper prenatal care, visit schools to show children how to take care of their teeth, and help local catfish-processing workers avoid injuries.

Delta Health Center is one small outpost in a network of Federal and state-supported clinics. Mississippi has improved health care and reduced infant mortality through a system that includes local doctors, regional centers, and the university hospital in Jackson, where sophisticated technology is available.

Of course, technology and trained doctors are useless if people don't have money to pay their medical bills. In 1988, a coalition of doctors, the League of Women Voters, Catholic charity groups, and other organizations pushed through an expansion of Medicaid coverage for poor pregnant women.

Still, while the poorest are covered by Medicaid, many families are "working poor," with low incomes and no health insurance. And a shortage of nurses and lack of money keep the state from providing all the measles, diphtheria, polio, and influenza shots its health officials consider necessary.

Mississippi's governor is not providing the leadership for children on the margin. Governor Kirk Fordice, a Republican businessman, last spring vetoed a sales-tax increase to provide more money for public schools, only to see his veto overridden. The same public outrage will be necessary to get action on teenage pregnancy and children's health care.

"There are twenty community health centers in Mississippi that have improved health care for poor people," says Dorsey. "Our existence has made the public health system more responsive. But the civil-rights groups still must keep the pressure on, because many are still locked out of equal care."

UNDISGUISED SPIES

Colorado peace activists held the first-ever demonstration in June at Buckley Air National Guard Field, to protest a top-secret U.S. spy satellite run from Buckley since 1970. Members of the American Friends Service Committee, Rocky Mountain Peace Center, Citizens for Peace in Space, and other groups hope to drum up a big turnout for a second demonstration in September. Buckley is one of the largest electronic spy bases in the world, and the Air Force is planning to expand it to the tune of $39 million this year. Officials refuse to talk about the details of the planned expansion, but it coincides with Air Force Chief of Staff Merrill McPeak's calls for new antisatellite missions to shoot down the space platforms of any small nation trying to develop its own spy satellites. McPeak's insistence that the United States remain |masters of space' received a warm reponse from the Clinton Administration. Meanwhile, Colorado activists are demanding that budget requests be opened up to the public and clarified.

|Congress and the public have a right to know how tax money is being spent,' says Tom Rauch of the American Friends Service Committee. For more information, call the Pikes Peak Justice and Peace Commission at [phone].