Study finds higher maternal mortality rates in states with more abortion restrictions

This one is pre print so may be still undergoing peer review

https://osf.io/preprints/socarxiv/7g29k

They make a good point in that pregnancy is inherently far more risky than abortion

 

This is one that brings up an extremely fraught issue

https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC9836943/

 

And of course there is the Guttmacher institute

https://www.guttmacher.org/abortion-rights-supreme-court

 

If anyone wants to know why the USA still has a maternal mortality rate 19 times that of Australia which doesn’t have even the lowest maternal mortality among advanced nations, then i highly recommend you read this paper

https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S0149291820300515

Although not a “medical citation” the website “Our world in data” has an interesting insight into the statistics

https://ourworldindata.org/maternal-mortality

https://www.axios.com/2022/07/05/maternal-mortality-death-abortion-ban-roe

 

Ooops this map is better

 

The maternal mortality rate for White women in the U.S. is 14.9 , which is only 2.7 times that of Australia.

Despite the country of Australia having a large amount of open space, a higher percentage of its total population is concentrated in city areas, which, as has been explained to you, probably does have some effect on lowering maternal mortality rates, both due to closer proximity to hospitals, better equipped city hospitals, and also due to average people living in cities having more money than in rural areas.

 

Let's also point out that statistically in the U.S. a woman is more likely to die in a car crash than from pregnancy or childbirth.

 

Looks nearly identical to maps ranking overall negative health outcomes, obesity, and poverty. It's almost like you're tripping over yourself to prove us right.

 

Correlation does not necessarily prove causation and yes that map is a horrific indictment on America

 

You mean compared to other majority-white countries that have less diversity than the U.S.

 

It's hilarious that you make this claim after your posts in this thread focused purely on correlation. Are you denying that things like obesity play a role in maternal health outcomes?

 

Yes, Bowerbird, if you take a look at this obesity rate map for the U.S., it looks quite similar to your maternal mortality rate map. Seems like there is about an 80% correlation to me.
Adult Obesity Prevalence Maps | Overweight & Obesity | CDC

 

Was the bit “not necessarily” written in a different language? Btw I note you ignored the research papers I posted

 

Again this is simply throwing mud against a wall. Did you not read my links that lay out the causes?

 

That was my point. It could easily be argued that is what you were doing in your opening post, trying to point out an alleged correlation.

Why should we believe differences in maternal mortality rates have anything more to do with abortion restrictions than they do with rates of fatherlessness and obesity?
I'd say by looking at the maps, if we combine the last two there seems to be an even stronger correlation to those than to abortion restrictions.

I suspect the real correlation has to do with rates of rural poverty, however. Less access to hospitals, having children at a younger age, women who have large numbers of children. All things that are statistically found at higher levels in conservative states.

 

https://www.commonwealthfund.org/si...-12/Declercq_maternal_mortality_primer_db.pdf

Can just say I am gobsmacked that peripartum haemorrhage keeps coming up as a factor? THIS IS TREATABLE! yes peripartum haemorrhage is life threatening. The blood loss is approximately 700 mls/minute but it is treatable!

https://www.weforum.org/agenda/2016...ca-s-shockingly-high-maternal-mortality-rate/
Okay some of these are preventable/treatable and some are not.

“Cardiovascular diseases” is huge. Some are unavoidable and peculiar to pregnancy I.e. pregnancy related cardiomyopathy, some are genetic, some are related to socio economic conditions ie. Rheumatic heart disease, which the cdc isn’t even tracking https://www.cdc.gov/groupastrep/diseases-hcp/acute-rheumatic-fever.html#surveillance
Women though should not and I repeat NOT be dying from “Hypertensive disorders”. Preeclampsia has one simple intervention - get the baby out!
There is no excuse for this level of deaths in young women

 

Shakes head

It correlation is proven if we can find reason underpinning causality yes?

What this is proving is that you have not read my posts where I have quoted research showing the causality.

Now I am glad you accepted number of children and guess what banning abortion causes?

 

I don't think the causality you believe exists is as reasonable as it might appear on the surface.

You seem to imagine that abortion is needed to save women's life, when in reality those situations are rather rare.
Situations where a doctor would be too afraid of performing an abortion when it is necessary to preserve the patient's life would be another level even rarer than that.
The law in all pro-life states says the doctor can do it if it is necessary to save the patient's life.

So you're really looking at a very small handful of rare and unusual medical situations, which I doubt would even have a noticeable impact in the overall maternal mortality statistics.

 

Look, it is simple. Pregnancy is bloody risky - especially it seems in America which should have a maternal mortality rate much like that of Australia or the UK. If you force women to continue pregnancy the their chances of dying are higher yes? Remember that the majority of women seeking abortion are living at or below the poverty line. These women may also opt for “home birth”, which may explain why women are dying from treatable complications.

 

The argument that abortion is needed because pregnancy in general is a risky business is a different argument from abortion being needed to deal with specific types of medical situations that could arise during a pregnancy.

If you're only focusing on the first argument, I will point out that that's not a very good argument for legalizing abortion later in the pregnancy.

 

Abortion is legal and provided for free in South Africa for the first 12 weeks of gestation and yet that nation's maternal mortality rate is quite high.

 

Nope! It is not! A LOT of the “specific medical conditions” have only one treatment and that is termination of the pregnancy. Yes no question that peripartum haemorrhage should be dealt with better over there but do you honestly think the situation will get BETTER if most of the OBGYN staff leave the states introducing abortion restrictions?

 

It is also NOT exactly a “first world country”. America would be better comparing itself to the UK (which also has a large “black” population or to any of the other industrialised nations.

I haven’t mentioned it specifically but it is noted in some of the papers I have been reading but one of the caused of maternal mortality is domestic violence and the sad part is that in America domestic violence is far more lethal than in other countries

 

Well, America is not exactly entirely a "first world country" either. Not like the other White English-speaking and Western European countries. We could have a long discussion about that in another thread.

I will point out that South Africa was almost considered to be like a first world country in the late 1970s and early 80s. Lots of people from first world countries travelled there, like they do to Australia.

 

You might find this interesting...
"while comprising only 7% of the state's population, 40% of domestic violence victims in Minnesota are Black women."

source: Proposed office would address ‘disturbing trend’ of missing, murdered Black women and girls (mn.gov)

"more than half of Black adult female homicides are related to intimate partner violence."
source: Coburn Place (state of Indiana)