I was talking to a student. She told me her mother died recently while "at hospital to get a baby." There was something about internal bleeding involved, my student doesn't speak English very well, so I missed a lot of the details on this. Oh, her sister-in-law (or possibly aunt?) died some time ago, also as a result of pregnancy.
There are 10 countries in the world that make up about 60% of maternal deaths worldwide. Tanzania is one of them, accounting for between 3 and 5 percent of worldwide maternal deaths all by itself.
Women and girls in this country are told explicitly that children are a blessing, and implicitly (also sometimes explicitly) that their only worth is in having children. But having children will kill 12% of women attempting it, and that right painfully. It's a system that reaches beyond reductionist to achieve outright sadism.
Citation.
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