Texas has highest maternal mortality rate in developed world, study finds....Congrats Texas!!!

[Londo_Jowo]

Perhaps you should correlate the closing of women's health facilities and not the timing of the budget cuts. 'cause they did not wait til the money ran out to close.

Perhaps you can provide the evidence if it exists. None of the articles appear to be able to do so.

 

[Azuma Hazuki]

Yeah. I guess the multitudes of biblical scholars from antiquity to the present were just participating in the overall delusion until, Praise Jesus, the enlightened internet jackasses finally revealed the truth.

Sorry if I hurt your feelings, Atreus. I'm not an atheist, but I know an evil spirit when I see one and Yahweh is it. Not only is the traditional Christian and Muslim list of God's attributes internally inconsistent, nothing else would exist if their God did, because a being which is perfect and self-sufficient would never and could never create. It would quite literally have no reason to.

 

[Hayabusa Rider]

That would be an interesting study. Are you more likely to garner support for legislation through careful use of experts and facts or through dogma and propaganda. I'm afraid of the answer.

The answer as to what is the most effective method is to pander to an ideology. The right approach is to assume nothing in a situation like this and act once the truth is determined. One person here has tried to blame Republicans when we don't know that their actions are in fact responsible. They may very well be, but his approach is "never let a good tragedy go to waste". That's not what people of either side should ascribe to and that the opposition has done wrong is not permissive in any way to be lower one's standards. A race to the bottom cannot be allowed.

 

[Thebobo]

Maybe Republicans should go look at these statistics and make sure their pro-life policies aren't killing poor women. I don't think Jesus was big on that.

I doubt anything the republicans do Jesus would be big on. That's the irony of all the so called evangelical republicans.

 

[Sunburn74]

So in Texas if you're pregnant and on Medicaid, in order to get an abortion during pregnancy it has to be proven that the pregnancy threatens or will threaten the life of the mother during the 9 months of pregnancy. Establishing that the pregnancy is likely to cause serious harm or considerable worsening of pre-existing medical conditions doesn't cut it. It has to be a high likelihood of death for Medicaid to pay for it. This puts doctors and patients in extremely uncomfortable positions because often the pregnancy is dangerous to the mother, is likely to cause serious harm and long term morbidity to the mother but has a low (but not zero) likelihood for death during pregnancy. Even if the mother on Medicaid says "look its clear to me that I will suffer serious physical harm and prolonged hospitalization by continuing with this pregnancy and I do want an abortion for the sake of myself and my other children" the state will not pay for it unless a doctor says it will absolutely kill her immediately.

This is an insane practice that forces mothers to choose between their health or the health of their baby and I'm sure it in part contributes to why Texas's maternal mortality is so high: high risk pregnancies rather than being terminated are forced to continue due to lack of access to abortion and due to the written law. It also puts physician's in the uncomfortable position of at times lying in order to meet the letter of the law in order to accomplish what ethically the spirit of the law is trying to do.

 

[Moonbeam]

I would think that Texas will produce some of America's greatest liberals owning to their intimate knowledge and exposure to the inordinately high degree of development of the conservative dementia that exists there. I would suggest, however, that they wear glasses if they have national ambitions least they be taken for your average Texas moron. Not everybody is like me and knows that most had as much chance as scrap meat put into a grinder has of coming out steak.

 

[ch33zw1z]

And Texans chant "were #1!"

 

[Londo_Jowo]

I know two women (colleague & child of a neighbor) who died during childbirth in the last 3 years that were part of the statistics in this thread. Both were in good health/not obese and had insurance/good prenatal care. They died from uncontrollable blood loss after delivery.

 

[nathanddrews]

I blame essential oils.

 

[thraashman]

Texas is not developed world anymore, that's why. Texas is Nigeria with BBQ.

That seems a little harsh. How do you know Nigeria doesn't have BBQ?

 

[HamburgerBoy]

fwiw, regarding illegal immigration mentioned before, Hispanic women (assuming an appreciable number of them are illegal to begin with) actually have about the same maternal mortality rate as whites and Asians. It's primarily a problem for black mothers.

One thing that confuses me a bit is the arbitrary 365 day cutoff. About half of these deaths occur outside of the 42 day window of medicaid support, apparently, and of those deaths, hypertension and drug overdoses are considered the two most common problems. Further, if you look at the trend line after 42 days, it's virtually linear, like one of the most linear things I've ever seen in any kind of social study, which is counter-intuitive if complications from pregnancy are supposed to be diminished over time. Further, doesn't this measure inherently bias maternal mortality rates towards those that are pregnant more frequently? E.g., a population where the average woman has 730 post-partum days is naturally going to be underrepresented compared to one where it is perhaps closer to 1095, just because there's a higher probability of a random heart attack or drug overdose only tangentially related to the pregnancy. While Texas doesn't have the highest fertility rate, they're close to it.