Experts: U.S. childbirth deaths on rise

YAHOO! News ^ | Fri Aug 24, 4:43 PM ET | By MIKE STOBBE,

[Niuhuru]

ATLANTA - U.S. women are dying from childbirth at the highest rate in decades, new government figures show. Though the risk of death is very small, experts believe increasing maternal obesity and a jump in Caesarean sections are partly to blame.

[stm]

Well lets see. Illegitimate births to poor, often drug addicted, young mothers are on an exponential rise. Nah, that probably has nothing to do with it.

[MNJohnnie]

Some numbers crunchers note that a change in how such deaths are reported also may be a factor.

Alram! Hysteria! Panic! Until you realize as usual the PC media is simply lying to us yet again.

[17th Miss Regt]

Alarm! Hysteria! Panic! Until you realize as usual the PC media is simply lying to us yet again.

I don't think they are lying to us. That requires forethought. A more reasonable explanation is that they are simply too ignorant to realize that a change in how things are reported may affect the numbers.

[Amelia]

I wonder how much has to do with the increase in fertility drug use (causing more multiple births) and the increase in in-vitro fertilization (which may be related to the rise in maternal age noted in the story)?

[MNJohnnie]

You know I keep getting told this by people who work with “Journalists”. They chastise me for vastly over estimating the intellectual ability of your average “journalists”.

I guess I should never assume malevolence when simple incompetence might explain the phenomenon just as well.

[dan1123]

I think there are many undue alarmist news stories that exist because they ignore that the data is reported differently now then before.

[GoodWithBarbarians JustForKaos]

Another fear-mongering article. How much is this ‘disastrous’ increase? 1/1000 of 1%!!! That is minuscule. At least they finally mentioned toward the end of the article that women having babies at older ages might have something to do with the minuscule increase. What a crock! Apparently the modern reporter’s job is to scare people to death, not to report things accurately with a logical perspective.

[Bodhi1]

Though the risk of death is very small, experts believe increasing maternal obesity and a jump in Caesarean sections are partly to blame.

I wonder how John Edwards is taking this, considering how much effort he put into pimping the C-section.

[billorites]

I would be interested to know whether this corresponds at all to age of women giving birth.

[Lizavetta]

I wonder how much has to do with the increase in fertility drug use (causing more multiple births) and the increase in in-vitro fertilization (which may be related to the rise in maternal age noted in the story)?

This reminds me of the story a few weeks back about how blacks paid higher mortgage rates than whites, even if they were at the same income level. Designed to get the reader inflamed with outrage over the injustices STILL doled out to blacks even now in the year 2007.

What was notably absent from that article, however, was the comparison of those two groups' credit ratings, debt loads, assets to liabilities ratios, and other important factors that lenders MUST take into consideration.

In other words, THEY LEFT THAT PART OUT and presented a very one dimensional picture. I suspect that the same is going on in this article.

[Sherman Logan]

A C-section may be safer for the baby in many circumstances, which was Edwards’ claim. It is almost always more risky for the mother than natural delivery.