I was wrong. In my post yesterday, which I will shamelessly flog, I claimed that the United States currently ranks 48th internationally in terms of maternal deaths. Robert Reich corrects me:
According to a report released last week in the widely-respected health research journal, The Lancet, the United States now ranks 60th out of 180 countries on maternal deaths occurring during pregnancy and childbirth.
To put it bluntly, for every 100,000 births in America last year, 18.5 women died. That’s compared to 8.2 women who died during pregnancy and birth in Canada, 6.1 in Britain, and only 2.4 in Iceland.
Why is this so? Reich will tell you why:
The real problem, in other words, was they didn’t get adequate health care before they became pregnant.
Other women are dying because they didn’t have the means to prevent a pregnancy they shouldn’t have had, or they didn’t get the prenatal care they needed during their pregnancies. In other words, a different sort of inadequate health care.
One clue: African-American mothers are more than three times as likely to die as a result of pregnancy and childbirth than their white counterparts.
I am going to pound you with the nitty gritty below the fold:
Too many American women do not have access to decent health care before they become pregnant. Hey, Ted Cruz, shove that up where the sun doesn't shine!
Unhealthy women who become pregnant do not generally have healthy pregnancies. And deliveries.
As a well-nourished and pretty damned healthy woman who has gone through three successful pregnancies and deliveries, I can testify to that. Suck it up, Ted Cruz, you total A Hole!
Prenatal health care. One of my pregnancies was attended by none other than the Mayo Clinic in Rochester, Minnesota. Prenatal vitamin and mineral supplements were part of my carefully orchestrated prenatal regime. As a result, besides my being of your basic rugged peasant stock, unexceptional deliveries. Ted Cruz, out to the woodshed: you need to have your backside hided off you are so stupid!
But, I am not an African-American woman, at least to my knowledge. I look white and privileged. A lot of African-American women do not get the kid gloves treatment I got because of the God damned racism of this nation! F* you, Donald Sterling! I'm naming names today!
Ted Cruz, the A Hole that Texans heedlessly elected to the U.S. Senate, thinks that mandating health care is lawless:
Sen. Ted Cruz, R-Texas, outlined a legal challenge that he thinks could thwart one of "lawless" President Obama's maneuvers in implementing Obamacare.
"One of the difficulties with many of these acts of lawlessness is that they're very cleverly designed to make it difficult to find plaintiffs with standing," Cruz said Wednesday in a speech to the Federalist Society. He thinks the latest employer mandate delay is assailable, though.
.... In general, Republicans may be hesitant to file lawsuits that force Obama to implement the Affordable Care Act's provisions, but Cruz made the suggestion while discussing his new report on 76 actions by the president that he views as abuses of executive authority.
"[A]n imperial presidency threatens the liberty of every citizen," Cruz said in the report. "Because when a president can pick and choose which laws to follow and which to ignore, he is no longer a president."
You see, dear America, Ted Cruz is afraid that American women will receive adequate health care before they are pregnant, during their pregnancies -- and it is especially disturbing to him that African-American women would also receive this care.
Also, he and his equally repugnant God awful right wing preacher father are opposed to contraception for women being delivered by health care insurance. An important factor in healthy pregnancies and deliveries is to not get pregnant if it endangers a woman's health. Also, spacing pregnancies properly means healthier pregnancies.
Yes. There are Death Panels. Republican Death Panels which kill women.
In other words, the imperialist, lawless, women-hating Republican like of Ted Cruz and his icky cronies need to STFU.