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Yes - for further context, there's been a big statistical increase in maternal deaths in the US in part due to changes in reporting. [1] There was strong evide
by michaelt 2y ago
Yes - for further context, there's been a big statistical increase in maternal deaths in the US in part due to changes in reporting. [1]
There was strong evidence that the US wasn't reporting all maternal deaths that meet the WHO definition; pregnancy and birth are major medical events, and can easily aggravate other medical conditions. But often you couldn't extract that information from the cause of death reported on a death certificate.
So the US added a 'pregnant or recently pregnant?' checkbox to cause of death reports, and started counting all deaths with the box checked, minus accidents, suicides and falls. So even if a woman had a terminal illness before getting pregnant, that would still count as a maternal death. Then they gradually rolled out the new form one state at a time, over the course of 15 years - so instead of seeing a clear step in the data, there's a long gradual increase.
This makes measuring any real changes in maternal death rates extremely challenging.
However, this report says maternal death rates are rising even after accounting for the changes in reporting.
[1] https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/p0j74zfs https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/p0j74zfs
- kingkawn 2y agoBy your logic there isn’t an increase in maternal deaths because they were already this high for a long time before and nobody cared, arguably an even worse situation. There is no way to spin this that isn’t societal neglect of pregnancy.
- prmoustache 2y agoThe fact the pregnant box is ticked doesn't mean the death is related to pregnancy. You can get pregnant with terminal cancer and it is unlikely to end well regardless of the pregnancy. The poster above just says it makes analysis of historical statistics difficult, he is not jumping to conclusion.
- fluoridation 2y agoFirst, where does the "nobody cared" come from? Second, so what you're saying is that any maternal deaths at all means society is neglecting pregnant women? Because your argument applies even if we believe there's zero maternal deaths per year and later we find out there's actually one per year.
- kylebenzle 2y ago[flagged]
- kingkawn 2y agoYah yah what a skillful strawman you can build
- dang 2y agoPlease don't respond to a bad comment by breaking the site guidelines yourself. That only makes things worse. https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html Edit: it looks like you've been repeatedly breaking the site guidelines in other places too: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=40892949 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=40892949 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=40845307 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=40845307 If this keeps up, we're going to have to ban you. We've had to warn you about this quite a few times in the past, and it's not cool. If you'd please review https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html and stick to the rules when posting here, we'd appreciate it. (Btw I've warned the GP in a couple other places in this thread, just in case it seems like the mods are taking sides)
- kylebenzle 2y ago[flagged]