We’re the glaring exception
The paradox of the US – so rich, yet so third world by so many measures – like maternal mortality for instance. With all our piles of cash, we suck at keeping poor women alive throughout pregnancy and delivery. How shameful that is. We’d rather spend the piles of cash on making sure that rich people can buy all the houses they want than on good healthcare for all.
The good news is that maternal mortality rates are declining worldwide. The bad news? The situation for women in the United States is a glaring exception. And in Texas, where clinics serving women have shuttered and their health interests have been battled all the way up to the US Supreme Court, the rate of pregnancy-related deaths more than doubled over the course of two years.
These are some of the findings in a new study (PDF) in the September issue of Obstetrics & Gynecology. The authors set out to analyze maternal mortality trends in part because the United States government has not published official data on this subject since 2007, they said, calling that fact an “international embarrassment.”
Why yes, that is an embarrassment. Shame on us.
The United States performs worse than any other developed nation when it comes to maternal death, according to State of the World’s Mothers 2015, the most recent comprehensive report compiled by Save the Children, a 90-year old global organization advocating for kids’ needs.
That’s what I mean. Worse than any other developed nation. That’s shameful.
And Texas is the standout.
From 2006 through 2010, numbers from the National Center for Health Statistics show that the rate of maternal deaths in Texas wavered little. There were as few as 69 deaths in 2009 and as many as 82 in 2008. But from 2010 to 2012, those numbers shot up from 72 deaths to 148. In 2013, deaths fell slightly to 140, and there were 135 in 2014, the last year analyzed by the study’s researchers.
Advocates for reproductive rights — including the right to legal and safe abortions — were quick to seize upon the news with their analysis about the trend in Texas.The uptick is no coincidence, they say. In this same window of time, Texas politicians voted to defund Planned Parenthood and slashed family planning dollars, reducing access to more than abortions. Other services provided by Planned Parenthood, which often caters to underserved communities, include breast and cervical cancer screenings, contraceptive counseling, STD testing and treatment, and multiple forms of preventive women’s care.“For many of our patients, Planned Parenthood and other family planning clinics are their gateway to the health care system,” said Sarah Wheat, chief external affairs officer for Planned Parenthood of Greater Texas, in a written statement. “Women have been left out in the cold, without being able to obtain regular healthcare screenings, or birth control to space their pregnancies, and delays in their initial pregnancy test and prenatal referral — all of which are harmful to women’s health.”
But Texas is only the worst.
Of 183 countries and territories studied from 1990 to 2013, only 17 saw maternal mortality rate percentage increases, the World Health Organization report “Trends in Maternal Mortality: 1990 to 2013” showed. In the United States, the maternal mortality rate grew by 136% over those 23 years, more than any other country studied.
More than any other country studied.
We just value life so much, you see.
Ah, Samantha, we value human life. Not women, humans.
Long years ago I had an internet punch-up with someone during which I pointed out – using the CIA’s figures – that the US had a maternal mortality rate more than double that of Cuba. To which she replied – it was a she! – that it was all the fault of those African-Americans who kept on getting pregnant and dying all over the place. Probably out of spite, if I recall her tone correctly.
Now your national rate is even worse, never mind Texas. And if she’d ever been to Cuba …….
So, all those “African-Cubans” don’t get pregnant? Or do they just not die as often? (OK, 007 ref granted.)
Canada’s aren’t great either. Last I read on it, some public health type essentially mulled it was about distribution. Aboriginal communities had rates wildly higher than background, especially…
It _is_ absolutely an alarming indicator. Points to rich nations who still have desperately poor among them, and do sadly little about it or for them, looks like. I’d qualify that in the US case with a shot at the assholes who attack abortion rights, except that, really, that seems kinda to fit under the same umbrella, anyway. As you’ll note the shits who push that usually are fine with their own spouse or daughter flying to a private clinic if need be. So, again, kinda works out to keep the poor poor, then blame them for it.
And I wonder what those 17 other countries might have in common.
In order to join the First World the US would have to ‘socialize’ its health system and there’s not much prospect of that occurring, is there? Prevention is better than cure.
No, there isn’t.
It also, I think, has to do with poverty, segregation and the attendant unevenness of services, and the like. We get this wrong in so many ways.
Ophelia,
“We get this wrong in so many ways.”
There are probably two underlying causes, the first error is the assumption that the market is the most efficient way to distribute health services and the second is the belief that public health services should be a charitable enterprise at the whim and pleasure of the local political elites. My wife was a maternal and child health nurse, I don’t know if there’s any equivalent in the US. She was employed by the local council to provide free consultations to all mothers and pregnant women in the shire, regardless of income. This is indicative of a very different attitude to health services.
The market might be useful if we’re making cars or selling ice cream, but not health. The result is that the US spends more on health, as a proportion of its GDP, than other OECD countries, with generally much lower outcomes. Of course some neoliberal ideologues really don’t care about outcomes, health isn’t the government’s business as far as they’re concerned.
No, there’s certainly no equivalent of that in the US. No Call the Midwife here.
Two things about Cuba. They have a national health service. Resources are deployed rationally – a primary care doctor + nurse + clinic in each locality, then immediate access to a polyclinic for each larger area for minor surgery, treatments etc, then their world class hospitals.
Oh, and they take pride in the fact that there is quality care for all. They also have medical personnel to spare for disasters and emergencies anywhere in the world.
There’s also the open hostility to Planned Parenthood, vs. the fact that they’re the ones most willing to provide low-cost prenatal care in the afflicted communities. Constantly battling efforts to defund them means they have less money to use on actual care-giving, and it’s the women who lose out. I’d also love to see a rate of comparison between pregnant women in Catholic hospitals compared to secular institutions (or even ‘religious affiliated hospitals without an abortion ban’), given how much of our country’s healthcare is now in Catholic-only zones.