Mortality

Virginia Apgar, a talented and qualified surgeon and anesthesiologist Had it not been for Apgar’s score method, Babies who were born malformed or too small or just blue and not breathing well would still be listed as stillborn, placed out of sight, and left to die. I would not be alive today if it weren’t for Apgar’s ingenious score method. My twin brother and I were born very prematurely. Will weighed 1.5lbs and I weighed only 1lb. My brother and I were immediately whisked off to get intensive care where we remained for almost 2 months in the preemie-unit before we were allowed to go home. Will and I are alive today because of the nurse’s amazing and intensive care in the preterm unit.

This being said, it did not come as a surprise to me that infant mortality rate is significantly lower than maternal mortality rate. It is simply because the infants are better taken care of than the mothers. However, this was not always the case. In his New Yorker article, Atul Gawande, explains that in earlier decades, the mother’s life used to be favored over the infant’s life. In fact, Gawande explains that if worst came to worst, doctors would use obstetrical forceps to crush the infant’s skull in order to get it out of the womb and save the mother. I was utterly horrified when reading about this gruesome method. Luckily for infants, obstetrical forceps are no longer used. Unlucky for mother’s, however, some advances in child birthing methods do more harm than good. Such as the once rare, but now very common, Caesarean Method. I was disturbed to find in Gawande’s article that although Caesarean sections have a myriad of negative side effects and take a lot longer to heal than natural birth, doctors still choose this method even if it is not necessary. Why? Because not only do they make more money off of a C-section, but it is also faster. I was very surprised in this article when Rourke mentions that she saw herself as a failure after succumbing to a C-section because she could not do the thing she was naturally meant to do.

The industrialization of child birth is perhaps why maternal mortality rate is so high. This spine-chilling chart from ProPublica, shows the insanely high maternal mortality rate of the US compared to other countries.



In the Slate article by Cara Heuser and Chavi Eve Karkowsky it is mentioned that US maternal mortality rate is so high due to poverty and lack of access to health care. It is terrifying to consider what will happen to lower-income women under the new Trumpcare system, as it will be even harder for these women to get access to health care, birth control, and abortion. Thus, in doing so increasing the maternal mortality rate. Not only this, but Trumpcare will increase the gap between the rich and the poor. Heuser and karkowsky claim, “It is discoursing and saddening to know that we will be taking a huge step backwards”.

-Jane B

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