March 13, 2023
Has maternal mortality really increased exponentially in the U.S.? We went to expert OB-GYN Dr. Ingrid Skop to explain.
The data deficiencies and problems inherent in calculating maternal mortality in the United States are well documented and have plagued calculations for years. In fact, the U.S. did not publish a maternal mortality rate for international comparison for a number of years due to these deficiencies.
Can you expand on this?
The non-comparable calculations between groups interested in this problem are highlighted by this article, which documents U.S. maternal mortality reported by the World Health Organization of 12/100,000 in 2020 and 21/100,000 in 2021, compared to U.S. CDC calculations of 23.8/100,000 in 2020 and 32/100,000 in 2021.
Clearly, these numbers don’t match up. But what is the impact?
While pro-abortion groups promote widespread abortion as the solution to the problem of maternal mortality, this is analogous to recommending forfeiture of all cars to prevent deaths from motor vehicle accidents.
The true solution is to identify the factors directly causing deaths and addressing their etiology.
As Feminists for Life, we are really concerned about the stories of high risk among Black pregnant women and moms. What is contributing to this, and what is the link to abortion?
Analysis of maternal deaths in Black women is instructive. Unfortunately, Black women are consistently documented to have three times as many maternal deaths compared to White women. Unexamined, however, is the fact that they also have three times as many abortions. If abortion were protective, we would see a different trend.
Recent analyses document increasing “deaths of despair” in women following pregnancy: suicides, homicides, accidents, and substance overdoses.
Additionally, high poverty rates due to single motherhood in Black women undoubtedly contribute to their poor outcomes. High quality European records-linkage studies document six times as many suicides in the year following abortion than childbirth. They also document that only 7% of maternal deaths following abortion are documented on death certificates (the method the CDC uses to identify most maternal deaths), demonstrating the likely vast CDC underreporting of U.S. abortion-related deaths.
Since the numbers don’t add up between WHO and the CDC, abortion advocates and providers continue to claim abortion is safer than childbirth. How can we separate correlation from causation in this climate or facts from fiction?
The U.S. does have an extremely high maternal mortality compared to other countries, as well as high abortion rates, and it is time to set aside abortion-promoting ideology to find out the real reasons.
Thank you, Dr. Skop. Clearly, raising women from poverty is essential, and abortion has cost women’s lives, not saved them.
Because women deserve better,
Serrin M. Foster
President
Feminists for Life of America
Editor-in-Chief
Women Deserve Better
& The American Feminist
PS: The detailed report is here: Handbook of Maternal Mortality: Addressing the U.S. Maternal Mortality Crisis, Looking Beyond Ideology – Lozier Institute