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In Which I have a Sad but Typical Conversation about Childbirth

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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