Having A Baby Can Kill You

My grandfather was born in 1897 in a rural area of Arkansas. Two months after his birth, his mother died. His father left him with his mother’s family and took off, eventually remarrying and having five more kids (that we know of). In 1897, no one found that unusual. Today, however, a mother’s death postpartum raises all kinds of bells and whistles. In the minds of most, there is absolutely no excuse for losing a mother from the effects of childbirth.

So, I’m going to need someone to explain to me why the hell maternal mortality rates in the US are up a whopping TWENTY-SEVEN PERCENT in the past five years. The numbers come from a National Institute of Health study that didn’t mince words in its conclusion that mothers dying during or within the first year after childbirth is “an urgent public health priority.” The matter is critical, especially in a climate where the national population will soon reach a point of large-scale decline.

A week ago, much of the department tasked with monitoring and improving maternal and child health at the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention was placed on leave, while some researchers who study maternal mortality have had their funding rescinded. 

“It’s a hard time for this to come out,” said Rose Molina, an OB-GYN at Harvard Medical School, who co-authored the study. “We cannot take our eyes off of maternal health right now, and if anything, we need to not just maintain focus, but actually increase investment in maternal health to bring down some of what we’re seeing — increases in pregnancy-related death rates, but also persistent inequities by racial and ethnic groups.”

Yeah, your budget cuts are literally killing people. Does that make anyone feel good? Are we happy with the choices that we’re making now that we see the consequences?

This isn’t the first time we’ve been warned about maternal death, especially among poorer populations who have difficulty accessing maternal healthcare and women of color who may go to the doctor but are given inadequate advice. What makes this new paper different is that it looks at mortality rates going out a full year after the baby’s birth. This is long after they’ve gone home, gotten into a routine, and bought all the cute little outfits.

The paper analyzed data from a CDC database that is different from the Pregnancy Risk Assessment Monitoring System (which was gutted by DOGE cuts last week). Overall, maternal mortality increased from 25.3 deaths per 100,000 live births in 2018 to 32.6 deaths per 100,000 live births in 2022 — an age-adjusted increase of about 27%

Sure, at first glance, those numbers may not look that significant. 32.6 out of 100,000? Is it really that bad? First, let us slap you in the face for minimizing any death like that. You ought to be ashamed of yourself. Secondly, every maternal death is bad because it means that somewhere, somehow, someone missed something they shouldn’t have, something that ended up costing a young mother her life.

Rates of maternal mortality were 3.8 times higher in American Indian and Alaska Native women when compared to white women, and rates in Black women were 2.8 times higher. Those same high-risk groups are more likely to not be married at the time they give birth, resulting in a higher number of orphans within that group.

Kisha Davis, a member of the board of directors at the American Academy of Family Physicians and chief health officer for Montgomery County, Md., said she has seen progress in mitigating racial disparities in the hospitals within her county. 

“I saw some really great data from our hospitals, and was really encouraged from some of the interventions that they’re doing, and some of them are even starting to see a reversal in that disparity,” she said, naming initiatives to train clinicians about implicit racial bias, as well as training physicians outside the OB-GYN specialty to better support mothers. 

Unfortunately, all the funding for those interventions has been cut completely out of the budget by the knife-wielding goons in the administration. Marian Jarlenski, a professor of health policy at the University of Pittsburgh, said, “Some of these NIH initiatives to improve maternal mortality were started and funded in the first Trump administration, and they’re still going on. However, NIH has cut off funding for some of these maternal health research centers around the country, so it’s very confusing,” Jarlenski said. “This study that we’re talking about today shows why this is not a political issue, and it’s really important that we all be focusing on how we can reduce maternal mortality and working together on it.”

The irony here is that both Muskrat and VP Fuxacouch have been continually saying that America needs to have more babies. Sure, that would help offset the coming population decline, but in order for that to work, we have to make sure that all those mommies actually live after giving birth! Is our entire population so stupid that we can’t see the correlation?

The next logical question is, what’s causing all these deaths? Although cardiovascular disease was the leading cause of the overall pregnancy-related deaths, cancer, mental and behavior disorders, and drug-induced and alcohol-induced death were important contributing causes of late maternal death. By underlying causes, other disorders predominantly related to pregnancy (a category that includes hemorrhage, venous complications, and so forth) had the highest rate and accounted for 17.4% of the overall pregnancy-related deaths.

One of the most bothersome things about this research is that it is only after the child’s birth that pre-existing conditions, such as cancer and heart disease, are found, and the high rate of fatality when they are discovered. Cancer accounted for almost 20% of late maternal deaths. This raises a critical question of why these conditions are not being caught earlier when more aggressive forms of treatment can be administered. Certainly, it would be helpful if cardiovascular and cancer screens were routinely given as part of a woman’s yearly health exam, but those screens are expensive, and most insurances don’t cover them without sufficient reason.

That’s interesting, isn’t it, that trying to stay alive isn’t sufficient reason for paying for healthcare?

We also need to look much more carefully at mental health care both before and after birth. In the US, homicide, suicide, and drug overdose are the leading causes of pregnancy-associated death, which include pregnancy-related death and death from incidental causes while pregnant. Although the current analysis does not analyze maternal death from incidental causes, published data show that intimate partner violence during pregnancy is an important cause of maternal death. Moreover, recent US statistics indicate a noteworthy increase in pregnancy-associated homicides in 2020. Traditionally, pregnancy-associated deaths from incidental causes have not been considered in maternal deaths, so we did not include them in our estimates. Yet, these deaths are important public health concerns.

In the conclusion, the paper states that “We estimate that 2679 pregnancy-related deaths during 2018 to 2022 could have been prevented if the national rate were reduced to the lowest state rate.”

We need to take action. We need to force Congress to pass funding that cannot be overridden by a billionaire with a room full of virgins. Mother’s Day is just a month away. If you love your mother, or the memory of your mother, why not do something that helps all moms live long enough to yell at your for dumping flour all over the kitchen floor.

Make the calls and don’t let up on the pressure to your Congressional representatives.