Posted on 05/12/2017 3:44:55 PM PDT by SMGFan
When you think about fatalities during childbirth, your mind may immediately leap to infant deaths. But although it’s much safer to give birth in America now than say, 100 years ago, women are dying from pregnancy or childbirth-related causes at a higher rate than any other country in the developed world.
An in-depth investigation into maternal mortality by NPR and ProPublica highlights the tragic story of a neonatal nurse who died less than a day after giving birth in the hospital where she works. It’s a tale more common in this country than you might think, even with medical innovations and improved living standards in the modern era. While we highly recommend reading NPR and ProPublica’s investigative report in its entirety, here are just a few of the things we learned about maternal mortality in the U.S.:
700 to 900 women die from pregnancy or childbirth-related causes every year in the U.S.: And about 65,000 women nearly die, the investigation found, resulting in the worst rate of maternal deaths in the developed world. Of those, 60% are preventable, according to an analysis by the CDC Foundation.
(Excerpt) Read more at consumerist.com ...
I remember a girl in elementary school in the 70’s. Her mom died giving birth to her in 1964. She was black.
I worked with a woman who came very close to dying. After giving birth she was in intensive care with lots of blood clots. Somehow childbirth compromised her heart. About 10 years later she had a heart transplant. Turned out that an aunt had lost a leg due to clots after childbirth, so it was apparently a genetic problem. Don’t know if her daughter caught the genes or not, but they are planning genetic testing to make sure before she decides to have children of her own.
The dirty little ‘secret’ about infant deaths and life-expectancy statistics is in the reporting protocols of different nations. In the U.S. if a child takes a single breath, (except, of course in an abortion mill) he or she is counted as a live birth and counts in the statistics. In some places if the child doesn’t make it through the first day or week it’s counted as a stillbirth.
I stopped reading right there.
I get your point, but my daughter and grandson damn near died because of short RN staffing and there being only one OB covering two hospitals over a Christmas holiday. The issue(s) are complex and the debate on this should transcend ideology.
I am going to read the full report as this subject interests me along with the quality of the research. Is there an agenda here? Don’t forget about the 1 out of 5 kids going to bed hungry every night. A childhood hunger “epidemic.” Total sham BS based on a phone survey asking whoever answered the phone whether their child ever complains about going to bed hungry. Nothing about whether you have enough food in the house.
Complications from a late pregnancy abortion are rampant (a neighbor’s daughter just made the news in my town from dying at the hands of crappy abortionist.) Racial differences are huge, especially for African American women. Poverty is not the issue totally - Poor people have better access to good care in my town than the insured people due to a nurse midwifery program at the federally funded primary care center.
I don’t see anything mentioned here about medical malpractice... some medical jihad perhaps... just sayin’...
“The issue(s) are complex and the debate on this should transcend ideology.”
Agreed. But I’m still thinking THIS particular article was written to discourage pregnancies as a bogus, ‘heath risk to women’ and promote not procreating in the first place.
It's far more likely for an older woman to die from childbirth issues, than for a younger one. Like, over 450% more likely.
According to recent statistics, the maternal mortality rate was highest among women aged 35 years and older (32.3 per 100,000 live births), compared to 7.1 per 100,000 live births to women under 20 years of age.
Older mothers have more complications stemming from obesity, diabetes, hypertension, and drugs including prescription meds. Older women are also far more likely to have had a previous abortion, which heightens subsequent infant AND maternal risk.
Golly, who knew?
I would not be surprised if the high rate is also caused by what deaths are attributed to maternal mortality. An example would be a pregnant women who died from a diabetes crisis.
I'd like to see where you got this. Not challenging you, just interested in more info.
I'm not sure, but I've read part of the problem with abortion-death stats is that that there are no uniform reporting requirements. An abortion-related infection gets written up as "an infection," abortion sepsis is reported as "sepsis," an abortion-related RH blood incompatibility problem is reported as RH with no mention of the abortion, etc. etc.
How does CDC define pregnancy-related deaths?
For reporting purposes, a pregnancy-related death is defined as the death of a woman while pregnant or within 1 year of pregnancy termination–regardless of the duration or site of the pregnancy–from any cause related to or aggravated by the pregnancy or its management, but not from accidental or incidental causes.
https://www.cdc.gov/reproductivehealth/maternalinfanthealth/pmss.html
that makes zero sense.
Thank you. Interesting. When they say “pregnancy termination,” do they mean in any manner: induced abortion, miscarriage, extreme premature delivery, AND full-term childbirth?
You're right, due to cultural changes, many women are waiting too long to have their first babies.
The "elderly primipara" (a woman over 35 who is having her first child) is indeed at greater risk. And her child is at greater risk too for genetic abnormalities such as Down Syndrome.
This is what '60s feminism has brought us. Women were to taught to believe that career comes first, family comes later (if at all).
Thomas Sowell commented, People today ascribe high infant mortality rates among the poor to “neglect” by a “society” that fails to provide enough prenatal care to those who cannot afford it, a quarter of a century earlier Banfield pointed out that high infant mortality was due not to poverty per se, but to behavior, for the poor Jews in the nineteenth-century slums had very different death rates from other immigrant groups in poverty. A JAMA article entitled “Born in the USA: Infant Health Paradox” points out that immigrant Vietnamese women have an infant mortality rates of 5.5 deaths per 1,000 live births, and African American women have rates of 16.3 deaths per 1,000. As America becomes more third world the stats will go higher.
This would seem to include ectopic pregnancies.
Maybe if Americans didn’t wait until they were like 87 years old to have kids, they’d find it a bit easier to deliver.
But, I know, the CAREER is much more important.
Nothing like that with my best friend's daughter-in-law. She and her husband are in their mid to late 30's. First pregnancy. She wasn't due until June. Over this past weekend, she started having abdominal pains, but they weren't labor pains. They called the doctor, were told to try a couple of things, but when those didn't help to alleviate the condition, her husband took her to the emergency room. Her blood pressure had spiked, and through tests, they discovered a problem with the mother's blood platelets. I'm not sure what the exact problem was, but once it was diagnosed, the doctors said they had to take the baby immediately, or the mother would die. They performed a Caesarean on her, and she bled profusely. They ended up having to give her two units of blood. The baby is fine, and the mother is recuperating finally, after having a couple of bad days. They weren't sure if she was going to make it. The doctors told her husband it was the worst case of that type they had ever seen. I've been told that some types of these conditions can be hereditary. She was an only child. Her mother is deceased. She plans to talk to her father about any family history pertaining to this type of problem.
As with your examples, poor women who come from certain cultural backgrounds tend to have much better outcomes, than poor women from other cultural backgrounds.
Pre-natal care is often touted as a panacea that will tend to equalize the outcomes; but it does't work that way.
Interesting to note, too, that ObamaCare's expanded access to Medicaid hasn't resulted in better health for the new Medicaid enrollees. In fact, the opposite has happened.
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