Dear Editor:

The Infant Mortality Rate IMR) is a measure that is easy to keep, easy to understand and hard to play games with. Live births are recorded and certified, so are deaths of infants up to the age of five. The ratio is the number of infant deaths per 1,000 births each year. The IMR is the best way we have in gauging how a society takes care of the least of its members.

According to the Maine Department of Health and Human Services report released March of this year; in 2003 Maine’s IMR was 4.3, and by 2013 the IMR rose to 7. This is an alarming increase in infant deaths.

The prime culprit is welfare “reform.” It is called “reform” as if it is some sort of improvement. But what politicians are really doing is adding misery to the poor. It makes the poor poorer while reducing the state budget for the advantage of the wealthy. Poverty is the result of this sort of exclusionary economics.

Effective poverty reduction provides work for the able and relief for the more unfortunate. But this is not the goal of today’s politicians. Instead we tolerate the smug trade of the lives of infants for tax reduction and call it welfare reform.

Fred W. Nehring

Boothbay