After Texas decided that it was going to wage a war against Planned Parenthood - cutting clinics of any public funding or forcing them closed with abusive medically unnecessary legislation - maternal mortality rate has risen to third world levels. There is a great article from the Guardian about the issue (www.theguardian.com/...):
From 2000 to the end of 2010, Texas’s estimated maternal mortality rate hovered between 17.7 and 18.6 per 100,000 births. But after 2010, that rate had leaped to 33 deaths per 100,000, and in 2014 it was 35.8. Between 2010 and 2014, more than 600 women died for reasons related to their pregnancies.
By the way the USA in general was already trailing nearly all developed nations (a trend that has gone for the worse, eventually doubling in the last decades), and actually getting worse each year not better like it has been the trend in most developed countries.
In the United States, the maternal death rate averaged 9.1 maternal deaths per 100,000 live births during the years 1979–1986,[19] but then rose rapidly to 14 per 100,000 in 2000 and 17.8 per 100,000 in 2009.[20] In 2013 the rate was 18.5 deaths per 100,000 live births, with some 800 maternal deaths reported)
Developed countries have a 10 or less rate, the countries close to 20 are Turkey, Saudi Arabia, Iran, Hungary… Texas with its 36 is in a different league with the poorer ex soviet republics trailing health and wealth behemoths like Chile, Albania, Lebanon or Fiji (www.indexmundi.com/...) and with a rate of 5 or 6 times more maternal deaths per 100,000 than most developed countries.
The people that think that is ludicrous to talk about war on women should read this article because there is little doubt on what’s the origin of this spike:
In the wake of the report, reproductive health advocates are blaming the increase on Republican-led budget cuts that decimated the ranks of Texas’s reproductive healthcare clinics. In 2011, just as the spike began, the Texas state legislature cut $73.6m from the state’s family planning budget of $111.5m. The two-thirds cut forced more than 80 family planning clinics to shut down across the state. The remaining clinics managed to provide services – such as low-cost or free birth control, cancer screenings and well-woman exams – to only half as many women as before.
The lack of Medicaid expansion can also be counted as likely influence in this and I hope that after 5 years or so of the Medicaid expansion we start to see studies comparing all kind of mortality rates between states that went for it and those that didn’t.
Republicanism with its theocentrism and hostility to science is leading those states they control to fall out of modern medicine, of modern resource management, of modern infrastructure… Of course the brunt of that damage is felt by the poorest segments in the state, that generally are also minorities. Many middle class and wealthy people do not experience, even second hand, the effects of these Republican future-to-the-back policies so they are ok with them or fault the victims for not having awesome jobs or accumulated family wealth that would pay for private health care, private schools, toll roads...
There is also a related study explained in an article from the Houston Chronicle(Report: Black women in Texas face the greatest risk from pregnancy related death)
In 2011 and 2012, the years studied in the report, black women accounted for nearly 29 percent of all maternal deaths, even though they gave birth to only 11 percent of all babies. In comparison, white women accounted for 38 percent of deaths and 35 percent of births and Hispanic women, the lowest risk group, accounted for 31 percent of deaths, even though they gave birth to 48 percent of babies.
The report, released late last week, also found that mental health and substance use disorders play a significant role in maternal death. It cited providers’ “repeated missed opportunities” to screen women and refer them to treatment for mental health and substance use disorders.”