{"id":179508,"date":"2018-01-18T21:44:00","date_gmt":"2018-01-19T02:44:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/2018\/01\/18\/end-stage-of-empire\/"},"modified":"2018-01-18T21:44:00","modified_gmt":"2018-01-19T02:44:00","slug":"end-stage-of-empire","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/2018\/01\/18\/end-stage-of-empire\/","title":{"rendered":"End Stage of Empire"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>Deaths of mothers in child birth in the US <a href=\"https:\/\/www.theguardian.com\/us-news\/2016\/aug\/20\/texas-maternal-mortality-rate-health-clinics-funding\">are skyrocketing<\/a>:<\/p>\n<blockquote><p><span style=\"color: blue;\">The rate of Texas women who died from complications related to pregnancy doubled from 2010 to 2014, a new study has found, for an estimated maternal mortality rate that is unmatched in any other state and the rest of the developed world.<\/span><br \/><span style=\"color: blue;\"><br \/><\/span><span style=\"color: blue;\">The finding comes from a report, appearing in the September issue of the journal Obstetrics and Gynecology, that the maternal mortality rate in the United States increased between 2000 and 2014, even while the rest of the world succeeded in reducing its rate. Excluding California, where maternal mortality declined, and Texas, where it surged, the estimated number of maternal deaths per 100,000 births rose to 23.8 in 2014 from 18.8 in 2000 \u2013 or about 27%.<\/span><br \/><span style=\"color: blue;\"><br \/><\/span><span style=\"color: blue;\">But the report singled out Texas for special concern, saying the doubling of mortality rates in a two-year period was hard to explain \u201cin the absence of war, natural disaster, or severe economic upheaval\u201d.<\/span><br \/><span style=\"color: blue;\"><br \/><\/span><span style=\"color: blue;\">From 2000 to the end of 2010, Texas\u2019s 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.<\/span><br \/><span style=\"color: blue;\"><br \/><\/span><span style=\"color: blue;\">No other state saw a comparable increase.<\/span><br \/><span style=\"color: blue;\"><br \/><\/span><span style=\"color: blue;\">In the wake of the report, reproductive health advocates are blaming the increase on Republican-led budget cuts that decimated the ranks of Texas\u2019s reproductive healthcare clinics. In 2011, just as the spike began, the Texas state legislature cut $73.6m from the state\u2019s 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 \u2013 such as low-cost or free birth control, cancer screenings and well-woman exams \u2013 to only half as many women as before.<\/span><\/p><\/blockquote>\n<p>Part of the Texas spike seems to be a statistical and data collection artifact, but a 27% increase nationally is nothing short of catastrophic.<\/p>\n<p>It is symptomatic of a some very serious and deep rooted problems that taken root in our society.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Deaths of mothers in child birth in the US are skyrocketing: The rate of Texas women who died from complications related to pregnancy doubled from 2010 to 2014, a new study has found, for an estimated maternal mortality rate that is unmatched in any other state and the rest of the developed world.The finding comes &hellip;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[],"tags":[505,588,440,460],"class_list":["post-179508","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","tag-disaster","tag-fail","tag-medical","tag-public-health"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/179508"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=179508"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/179508\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=179508"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=179508"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=179508"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}