Fear-mongering continues regarding parenthood and child-rearing. I address two aspects here: risk of maternal mortality and dangers associated with unintended pregnancy.

Risk of Maternal Mortality

A frequent contributor to this blog, Professor John M. Grondelski, has addressed the contention that maternal mortality (any mortality, no matter the rate) requires the escape valve of lawful abortion-on-demand through birth (see his post here). In May 2024, Joshua Monnington addressed the same subject in an essay for The Federalist entitled “Watching My Wife Become a Mom Gave Me a New Appreciation of a Mother’s Sacrificial Love.” He cited a 2022 report in Scientific American by an OB-GYN who tried to do himself out of a job by implicitly encouraging women to avoid pregnancy or terminate pregnancy (Adebayo Adesomo, M.D., “Pregnancy Is Far More Dangerous Than Abortion”). Fortunately, Monnington also cited a 2024 critical evaluation of such data by National Public Radio (NPR). That evaluation found that, instead of the figure of 32.9 deaths per 100,000 births cited by some, the figure is actually 10.4.

In 1900, the maternal mortality rate in the United States was about 850 per 100,000 births. By 1960 it was under 50 (see “Achievements in Public Health, 1900-1999: Healthier Mothers and Babies,” CDC, Oct. 1, 1999.) And, as just indicated, it is currently 10.4. Where does this risk stand relative to other causes of death for today’s women? Answer: In tenth place: “In 2022, the 10 leading causes of death for women ages 20-44 were unintentional injuries (led by poisoning and motor vehicle accidents), cancer, heart disease, suicide, chronic liver disease/cirrhosis, homicide, COVID-19, diabetes, cerebrovascular diseases and [in tenth place:] deaths associated with pregnancy and childbirth” (UnitedHealth Foundation, “2024 Health of Women and Children Report”).

Clearly, American women of the 19^th century and the first half of the 20^th century knew from personal experience — from their grandmothers, their mothers, their aunts, their cousins, their sisters, their daughters, their neighbors — that there was a high risk of death in becoming pregnant. And I must add: should they survive pregnancy and childbirth, there was a high risk that their child would die young. In hindsight we may say that such risk was a normal part of life. Indeed it was. Yet the women could have chosen to forego marriage or sex and saved themselves. They did not. Instead, they married and had children, indeed many chose to have many children — thereby increasing the risk to themselves. They had physical courage.

In reflecting on their physical courage (a courage like to which men had, and have, no counterpart), I thought of the courage of pioneer women. Soon after Senator McCain presented Governor Palin as his choice for running mate, Steve Mosher ran a column about her. (Mosher is the head of Population Research Institute. Forty-five years ago, he was a researcher in China and disclosed to the world the Chinese policy of one-child and forced abortion.) Mosher compared Palin to pioneer women (“Sarah Palin, An American Original,” Population Research Institute, Sept. 18, 2008). I brought this piece to the attention of a relative who had moved from the Midwest to western Colorado 11 years earlier. During these years, she had become versed in the literature by and about pioneer women. She recommended several books which I subsequently purchased for my daughters. Let me share her recommendations with you: Joanna L. Stratton, Pioneer Women, Voices from the Kansas Frontier; Harriet Fish Backus, Tomboy Bride; Margaret A. Frink, Covered Wagon Women, Diaries & Letters from the Western Trails; Conrad Richter’s trilogy, The Trees, The Fields and The Town; Jane Jacobs, editor, A Schoolteacher in Old Alaska: The Story of Hannah Breece; Virginia Cornell, Doc Susie: The True Story of a Country Physician in the Colorado Rockies; Carol Crawford McManus, Ida: Her Labor of Love; and Agnes Morley Cleaveland, No Life for a Lady: Women of the West.

The pioneer women could do it all. They could take care of themselves, take care of their husbands, take care of their children, take care of their neighbors, and take care of their elderly. They could farm and ranch, ride horses and shoot a rifle, slaughter and cook, change diapers and home-school, and on and on. Should the women of the United States in 2025 fear maternal mortality rates of 10.4?

Women in my family include a great-great-grandmother, Jane Knill Pugin, who was widowed in 1852 at age 27. On her own she raised her two children and the six children of her late husband’s from his two previously deceased wives. (For more on Pugin, see Rosemary Hill’s 2009 bestseller in the U.K., God’s Architect: Pugin and the Building of Romantic Britain.) My family also includes my maternal grandmother who raised seven children on her own, and my paternal grandmother who, while blind, raised five. Undoubtedly, you have such women in your family.

Forgive me for thinking that today’s women — or at least the media-created stereotype of today’s women — are decidedly different from such heroines. What 19^th century woman would not have loved pregnancy and motherhood with only a remote chance of death for either herself of her child? All women who lived before 1950 would truly envy today’s women. But today’s “new woman” not only strives to prevent pregnancy but, should she become pregnant, will contemplate killing her child in the womb, for whatever reason she deems acceptable.

It is unborn daughters who bear the brunt of their mothers’ decisions. In many societies, including some groups within American society, women are under tremendous pressure from their families and their husbands to abort daughters. The Economist’s cover story for its March 6-12, 2010, issue, “Gendercide – What Happened to 100 Million Baby Girls?” examined the worldwide abortion of female fetal human beings. The same issue of The Economist also contained a review of Xinran’s book Message from an Unknown Chinese Mother: Stories of Loss and Love. And that issue appeared in the same time frame as the obituary for Italian widower Pietro Molla, who died April 3, 2010, at the age of 97. His wife, Gianna, a pediatrician, had died in 1962 of an infection one week after she gave birth to their fourth child. During her pregnancy she had refused treatment for a uterine tumor because the treatment could have harmed the child. This child grew to adulthood and was present, with two siblings and her father, when Pope John Paul II canonized her mother in 2004.

Who are the better models for our mothers, sisters, wives, daughters, nieces, and granddaughters? Pioneer women and Gianna Molla? Or today’s “new woman”?

Danger of Unintended Pregnancy

There is a continuing drumbeat for free, widely distributed contraception. A bill in Maryland (now defeated) would have provided for condoms in vending machines in grade schools. At the college level, as of 2018, 85% of colleges offered free condoms. (American elites are pimps.)

In 2012, I published a critique of the mere eight pages in a report by the Institute of Health (IOH) which was used by HHS (Health & Human Services) to support a national, federal mandate for contraception because it allegedly would promote women’s health. (This is the same mandate that was the subject of lengthy litigation by the Little Sisters of the Poor.) In my essay I asked what science, what medical benefit, supported the federal government’s interest in our people’s infertility when fertility is normal and healthy. Among other things, I described in detail the difficulty bureaucrats had in defining “unintended” pregnancy. I wrote, “In defining the subjective condition of “unintended pregnancy” there is no medical science. It is sociological, based on polling.” I also wrote:

• The issue of cost-effectiveness has been part of the public debate, namely, that the cost of the contraception mandate imposed on insurers is totally offset by the savings of not having to insure pregnancies. California’s Medicaid program alone saved the state $1.1 billion over two years, $2.2 billion over five, in medical and social services costs (pp. 107-108). “[T]he theoretical benefit of all conceptions being intended is enormous” (p. 72). If the United States had no children, the cost savings would be astronomical.
• The title of the relevant discussion [in the IOH report] is “Preventing Unintended Pregnancy and Promoting Healthy Birth Spacing” (p. 102). So, the Federal Government interest in infertility is stated to include “optimal” birth spacing. It is not enough that pregnancies be intended, but now even intended pregnancies must be optimally spaced apart. A government aspiration for optimal spacing is related to an aspiration for the optimal number of children and of course for “the optimal child.”

Among the deleterious consequences of a woman having an unintended pregnancy that she does not terminate through abortion, the IOH report describes a parade of horribles for parenthood itself — and importantly, regardless of whether conception was intended or not. Having a child “can cause severe disruption to other life plans, decreased resources for children already born, temporary or permanent lowering of educational and career aspirations, and a threat to present and future economic security. Its effects can be surprisingly far-reaching, contributing, for example, to the problem of insufficient child care in the United States… [and] can place a strain on parental relationships…” (p. 74).

In my next post, I will discuss further lines of attack on parenthood and children.