pregnancy deaths

To hear 'right-to-life' (read anti-abortion) Christians tell it, they care about all life, most pointedly about the rights of the unborn fetus. By God, they care! But it is hard not to deduce that that caring has led to a spike in maternal deaths in Texas. No matter ... they care.

The rate of Texas women who died from complications related to their 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....
[T]he report singled out Texas for special concern, saying the doubling of mortality rates in a two-year period was hard to explain “in the absence of war, natural disaster, or severe economic upheaval”....
In the wake of the report, reproductive health advocates are blaming the increase on Republican-led budget cuts that decimated the ranks of Texas’s reproductive healthcare clinics. In 2011, just as the spike began, the Texas state legislature cut $73.6m from the state’s 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 – such as low-cost or free birth control, cancer screenings and well-woman exams – to only half as many women as before.

There does not appear to be a rock-solid if-then between clinic shut-downs and mortality, so the angry arrogance of abortion-rights advocates needs to be held in check. Still, not to suspect some causal relationship is also a bridge too far. God, I am sick of institutions or belief systems that improve life by dictating how others must live their lives. 'Islamic State', fundamentalist Christianity, western 'values' ... isn't it better to help people out where they need it?