For every 100,000 live births, pregnancy causes 14 maternal deaths in the U.S., compared to just three in Iceland, seven in Canada, 12 in Saudi Arabia, 25 in Russia and 27 in China. The U.S. is the only one of these countries that has seen an increase in the maternal mortality rate (MMR) in the last 30 years. The Centers for Disease Control (CDC) estimates that 60 percent of maternal mortalities are preventable, yet hundreds of mothers die because they lack the resources to receive suitable healthcare. In the U.S., women with no prenatal care are up to four times more likely to suffer a pregnancy-related death. Black and Native American women are slightly less than three times as likely to die as a result of pregnancy as white women, another reflection of the rampant discrimination in the U.S. These statistics reflect the real-life human experiences with the treacherous socioeconomic gap of minorities in the U.S. and the blatant existence of healthcare as a business.
Moreover, the war against birth control rages on, a war controlled by the majority of men in Congress who think they know more about women’s reproductive systems than the women themselves. Ultimately, mothers’ survival depends upon how valued they are by society and the law’s interpretation of this value by implementing healthcare as a right.
On Dec. 21, 2018, President Trump signed the Preventing Maternal Deaths Act which aimed to research maternal deaths and recommend options to improve maternal healthcare, a bipartisan effort to discover why the U.S. has an obscenely high MMR. Finally, the value of mothers’ lives is important to both parties.
Or is it? Regardless of the statistics this act will reveal, national programs are unlikely to be implemented because health is not seen as a human right in this country. From 2002 to 2008, the Bush administration withheld funding from the UN Population Fund, the United Nations’ sexual and reproductive health agency, because the agency supported several organizations who provide safe abortions, regardless of many other organizations’ efforts against child marriage, gender-based violence, genital mutilation and maternal mortality. Similarly, Planned Parenthood’s funding, as well as the 42 million “deaths” worldwide each year from abortion, are higher on the GOP’s agenda than the 830 mothers who die each day worldwide from mostly preventable causes, such as poverty, inaccessibility or medical ignorance.
Planned Parenthood provides services crucial to lowering maternal mortality rate, such as information and services for contraception, pregnancy and STDs. The primary causes of MMR in the U.S. are cardiovascular disease, infection and hemorrhage; without prenatal care, these conditions are rarely detected. The Preventing Maternal Deaths Act is likely to find that providing easy access to reproductive healthcare, including birth control and prenatal healthcare is the glaringly obvious answer to saving mothers and babies.
Additionally, people lower on the socioeconomic ladder, often minorities, are unable to access healthcare because they do not have the money. Countries such as Iceland and Canada with universal healthcare ensure that all mothers non-discriminately receive substantial prenatal and natal care—that human life is valued. Valuing women equally to men is the first step to preserving mothers’ lives. The second is making healthcare universal so that a person’s life is not dependent upon socio-economic advantages, such as money, race or gender. Until the U.S. decides as a country that healthcare is a civil or human right, maternal mortality is unlikely to significantly decline.
