In the time it takes the moon to pirouette around our marble globe of a world, approximately 830 woman die during childbirth. That’s 830 families who lose all maternal comfort. In 2017, this occurs daily.
35.8 woman die every 100,000 live births in Texas alone. This figure has doubled since the year 2000 and is now the highest in the developed world. By way of comparison, firearms kill 10.3 people per 100,000 in the US. Despite this discrepancy in mortality, the media and political attention gun control receives is far greater than that for reproductive health—both are preventable.
A tragic escalation in maternal mortality is usually explained by broad societal paradigm shifts, such as recessions or war. However, in Texas, the prevailing cause is attributed to a
single piece of legislation, changing the rubric of access to healthcare for women. A 2011 act to cut spending was directly targeted at reducing and ultimately defunding Planned Parenthood, a non-profit organisation (NGO) responsible for providing reproductive healthcare to over four million women a year.
Such an egregious decision was made by the 82nd Texas state legislature, comprising of six
female state senators from a total of 31. This senate, along with millions of constituents, were unaware that women’s health is multifaceted and not solely defined as access to abortion.
Nevertheless, in blaze of pro-life rhetoric, the family planning budget was cut from $111 million to $37.9 million. While on the topic of abortion, Marie Stopes International, a NGO providing reproductive health to over 20 million women worldwide, predicts 2.1 million unsafe abortions in the US, as a result of Trump’s anti-abortive policy, resulting in 21,700 maternal deaths.
However, maternal mortality cannot be explained by one factor alone. Issues such as mortality differences amongst minorities need to be addressed (the numbers of deaths of Caucasian woman compared to those from African- American minorities are alarming).
As Nick Kristof and Sheryl WuDunn said in Half the Sky: “In the nineteenth century, the central moral challenge was slavery. In the twentieth century, it was the battle against totalitarianism. We believe that in this century the paramount moral challenge will be the struggle for gender equality around the world.”
A correlation between the closure of abortion clinics, the defunding of reproductive health and an increasing mortality is largely observational—subsequent causality is hard to prove.
However, the disparity between regions with and without access to adequate care is hard to ignore. In California—where Planned Parenthood is woven into mainstream politics and reproductive health services are easier to access than most other states – 15.1 woman die per 100,000, well below the US average of 23.8. Internationally, the comparison is far more disturbing. South Sudan has a maternal mortality rate of 789 per 100,000. A woman living in a developing country is one thousand times more likely to die, as a result of pregnancy, than a woman living in the west. Such regions, not coincidentally, are known to have poorer access to reproductive health, family planning services, and midwives.
Barriers in many developing countries—often violent incarnations of religious and cultural
norms—restrict access to contraception and dictate social emancipation.
Unchaining woman from a distressingly common cycle of compulsory reproduction, morality aside, is immensely beneficial to both the mother and child’s health. Empowering woman, medically, fiscally, and socially is the most effective cure for poverty in the developing world.
We live in an era where health and politics are inseparably entwined. The very act of providing healthcare is political. It is commonplace for many to shy away from public displays of allegiance or heated discourse in the name of impartiality. Instead physicians, public health experts, journalists, and politicians should publicise this huge gender healthcare disparity.
Our time is defined by technological prowess, scientific discovery, and inventive ingenuity. We eradicate diseases, encode artificial intelligence, and harness the power of a dying
star. Yet, every year, 300,000 woman die from preventable complications of childbirth. They are dependent on global action. It will take humility and diligent compromise. But the alternative is deplorable. If we don’t act, mothers will continue to perish needlessly.
