“As for the particular conditions related to pregnancy that contribute to maternal deaths, hemorrhage and infection are leading causes in both the U.S. and worldwide,” he said. Cardiovascular disease also plays a significant role in the statistics.
Overall, maternal deaths in the U.S. “most commonly occur in the few weeks following a delivery, often during a separate hospitalization, and in many cases due to causes not typically thought of as pregnancy-related,” he said.
‘Understand and address the high rates of maternal mortality’
The U.S. figures have been the subject of debate among statisticians and medical experts in recent years. Most recently, in March of this year, researchers in Canada and the U.S. posited that “high and rising rates of maternal mortality in the United States are a consequence of changes in maternal mortality surveillance.”
The researchers pointed to the relatively new use of a “pregnancy checkbox” on death certificates issued by U.S. states, which the researchers said led to “an increase in misclassified maternal deaths.”
“Identifying maternal deaths by requiring mention of pregnancy among the multiple causes of death shows lower, stable maternal mortality rates and declines in maternal deaths from direct obstetrical causes,” the researchers said.
Advocates argue that maternal mortality rates in the U.S. are nevertheless too high, particularly among certain demographics. The Canadian researchers, for instance, noted that death rates “were disproportionately higher among non-Hispanic Black women.”
The U.S. bishops, meanwhile, similarly stressed “the racial disparities that impact women of color, particularly Black and Indigenous women,” with the prelates arguing that “poverty and economic stressors, racism, discrimination, family breakdown, and other forms of injustice” affect women and mothers throughout the country.
“Women must have access to appropriate treatment for substance abuse disorders, mental illness, and mental health challenges, especially postpartum depression,” the bishops wrote, “and efforts must be made to understand and address the high rates of maternal mortality and morbidity.”
Health habits, poverty, family structure should all be addressed
Lester Ruppersberger, a retired OB-GYN and former president of the Catholic Medical Association, told CNA that women should prioritize consulting with physicians both before and during pregnancy to ensure healthy outcomes.
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“Once pregnant, early access and visits to OB-GYNs are important to evaluate/assess the health of the mother and identify risk factors and advise on how to have a healthy pregnancy and delivery,” he said.
“We do have an ever-increasing overweight population compared to 20 years ago,” he said. “Drug and alcohol use/abuse, including marijuana, is still a problem.”
“Maternal death rates are 2.5 times higher for Afro-American women and three times higher for Hispanic women overall,” he noted.
Scrafford, meanwhile, said that “many or even arguably most cases of maternal mortality are preventable.”
Many leading health authorities, he pointed out, opt for extreme measures such as abortion and sterilization to drive down the mortality rate. These options can create poor health problems of their own, he noted, while abortion itself creates “far more cases of mortality among unborn human beings than they reduce among women.”
He argued that “restoring fundamentals of health — at individual and family levels — would prove a more effective strategy for reducing maternal mortality than the aforementioned approaches which have already been failing for decades.”
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