In addition to DATA 150 I am taking DATA 202, and for our term paper we have to focus on the intersection of technology and modern American political policy. I decided to hone in on the criminalization of abortion and maternal mortality rates. For that reason, I was drawn to the charts on maternal mortality, and actually found a lot of useful information that I can cite in my paper. One graph that I thought was particularly interesting was the maternal deaths by cause across the world from 1990 to 2016 because it included data on how many maternal deaths were related to abortions.
According to this data, 20,496 maternal individuals died because of abortion, miscarriage, and ectopic pregnancy. The reason why this caught my eyes is because abortion, miscarriage, and ectopic pregnancies are all very different things. The other causes on the chart are unfortunate incidents that happened directly to the mother, like sepsis and hemorrhaging, while abortion, miscarriages, and ectopic pregnancies are all fetal related. So, I can see why this organization categorized it the way that they did but, I would argue that they should not be grouped together. Personally, I would separate abortion and ectopic pregnancies and miscarriages (although these two things could arguably warrant their own section) because arranging them together is a dangerous generalization of fetal related maternal deaths. Ectopic pregnancies and miscarriages are not the choice of the maternal individual, they happen outside of the individual’s control, abortion happens by choice of the mother. The former usually happens naturally without external intervention, while the latter has to be performed by way of medicinal intervention. If the maternal indivdual were to die because of these events, the ectopic pregnancy and miscarriage would have been due to an endogenous cause, while abortion would have been cause by an exogenous interruption. To classify these things as similar is misleading and undermines the data.
Besides that, I did notice that as time went on, maternal deaths generally decreased, which is indisputably a good thing. There is an option on the website to see the maternal deaths by cause in a specific country, so I thought it would be a good idea to compare the number of deaths in a country with more lenient abortion laws to one with far stricter abortion laws. To do this, I compared the United States (which has relatively liberal laws), and Honduras (where abortion is not allowed even if the mother’s life is at risk). I assumed that the United States would follow the general trend, where maternal abortion, ectopic, and miscarriage related deaths would decrease. However, I was wrong, these rates have actually gone up over the course of 26 years, and a total of 175 maternal individuals have died from these causes. In Honduras, maternal deaths due to these causes follow the general trend and have decreased over the span of 26 years, where only 2 maternal individuals have died. The reason behind this disparity requires an extensive review of the conditions in each country, so I cannot explain with confidence why there is a variance. My inaccuracy prompted me to reflect on the Rosling TedTalk, and remind myself that preconceived ideas about a certain place are reliably incorrect.