Topeka ? Kansas lawmakers who said Friday they wanted to expand health care to fetuses of low-income women expressed frustration with the state welfare agency.

“Are we playing stall tactics?” asked Rep. Brenda Landwehr, a Wichita Republican who is chairwoman of a House-Senate committee studying children’s health issues.

Landwehr had called on officials with the Kansas Department of Social and Rehabilitation Services to provide information to help the committee draft legislation.

SRS officials, however, were unprepared and promised to convene a group of experts to study the matter.

Landwehr appeared unsatisfied, saying the issue of providing low-cost health coverage to fetuses under the state’s HealthWave program has been discussed for more than a year.

Landwehr said the measure was needed to help reduce the number of low-birth-weight babies, which sometimes have significant and costly health problems.

“A low-birth-weight baby is a very expensive baby,” Landwehr said.

A state study last year showed that children who weigh less than 5 pounds 8 ounces at birth sustained medical costs that averaged five times more than normal-birth-weight babies — $16,000 compared with $3,100 — during the first year of life. The study said Kansas could save millions of dollars in medical expenses if it did a better job of providing prenatal care to prevent low-birth-weight babies.

At issue is a gap that exists in state health care assistance to low-income Kansans through Medicaid and HealthWave, Landwehr said.

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Certain pregnant women can be too old for HealthWave, which offers low-cost coverage for youths up to 19 years old, and have too high an income for Medicaid, though their earnings could still be too low to afford private insurance.

State estimates of how many women fall into this gap have ranged from 700 to 2,700. Landwehr said the state should provide a way to make sure they had prenatal care.

But some lawmakers questioned whether there actually had been any low-birth-weight babies caused by this gap in coverage. SRS said it planned to convene a group of obstetricians and gynecologists to determine if there were pregnant women not getting coverage because of the age limit in HealthWave.

The issue was raised during the last legislative session and included overtones of the abortion debate.

Groups that support a woman’s right to an abortion said they feared that giving a fetus legal rights to health insurance coverage could be used as a backdoor attempt to establish legal rights for the unborn child — rights that could conflict with the pregnant woman’s rights.

However, Landwehr, who opposes abortion, has stated her proposal has nothing to do with abortion.

She said she was trying to elevate the health care status of the unborn.

“We do a good job of taking care of the mother,” she said. “What we don’t do a good job of doing is what is in the best interest of the unborn child. There are two lives we are dealing with.”