Sunday, March 21, 2010

News Flash: Maternal Healthcare Faliures in the U.S. Today


The healthcare debate in the U.S. is one that everyone has become all too familiar with. One would be hard pressed to go through a day without hearing or reading about the development of healthcare reform in the nation. However, while people have become focused on this issue as an outlet for jabs from pundits and a continual presence in the news, there are serious issues at hand regarding equal health coverage in the United States today. Amnesty International has recently completed a study focused on this very issue, specifically the maternal healthcare crisis, and how too many women are dying in the U.S. while having babies. The effective care of women having birth in the U.S. has declined in recent times and this lack of care underscores other, greater issues surrounding the equal treatment of women both in the U.S. and around the world today.
Jennifer Block, in her article from Time magazine, highlights the main points from the Amnesty International report, titled “Deadly Delivery”, and provides insight on how a woman dying during childbirth is a “systemic violation of women’s rights.”[1] With her article Block proves how the economic disparity among women as compared to men and between white and non-white females is one of the greatest contributors to death during childbirth. These economic disparities are the result of societal trends that maintain the inferior status of women in society and thus by the rigid structuring of gender roles provided by ‘the system’ women have less capability to avoid these childbirth complications. The ability to avoid the causes of death from childbirth is clearly a possibility because the Amnesty International report illustrates how most women are dying not from random complications but because they “are not getting the comprehensive services that they need.”[2] On the same note, while black women in the U.S. are “four times as likely as white women to die from pregnancy-related causes” it is not due to complications like hemorrhage and “they are no more likely to experience certain complications.”[3] These are the most apparent issues surrounding maternal healthcare today and while they only scratch the surface of this large issue the do provide insight on greater problems surrounding the role of women and class difference in society today.
Block’s article and the Amnesty International report provide statistics highlighting the disparate healthcare coverage of women and minority women, but what this perspective of maternal healthcare coverage really proves is the greater failures of equality in society today. The clearest issue linked to maternal healthcare coverage is gender inequality in the workplace. Many Americans today do not have ample healthcare coverage simply because they do not have jobs. Women suffer under the patriarchal system that discriminates against females and where “women lack access to job security and the benefits of social protection.”[4] Women are also faced with the issue of choosing to have children which threatens job security in the first place and can result in greater health risks for women, as the increasing rates of birth-related deaths have shown, potentially from loss of their job and its associated health benefits. It is no surprise to see that many of these trends apparent in the U.S. are paralleled in other nations today. But while other nations are taking proactive steps to alleviate the risks faced by women before, during, and after childbirth the measures taken in the U.S. have lagged behind. For instance, the organization ‘Chile Crece Contigo’ in Chile promotes access to health services and also includes goals aimed at “stimulating women’s employment.”[5] It is this lack of focus on the issues facing women’s health in the U.S. that has placed American women “at greater risk of dying from pregnancy-related causes than in 40 other countries.”[6] The first step to solving this problem is acknowledging that it exists, and more importantly tackling the roots of the issue, such as unequal representation in the workplace.
The examination of different rates of birth-related deaths between white women and black women in the U.S. parallels Peggy McIntosh’s explanation of white privilege. Similarly to how McIntosh explains meritocracy as a myth, I feel people envisage equality under health care in the U.S. too ideally and that this sense of equality is a myth. I do not intend to say that the American public thinks that every single person is provided the same exact health care benefits, but rather that programs like Medicare and Medicaid give people a false sense of comfort with the healthcare status quo. The glaring differences between whites and non-whites under the nation’s health care system are perpetuated by what McIntosh refers to as the “colossal unseen dimensions” of social systems that may be acknowledge as problems but are rarely altered.[7] One cannot even conclude that the current attempts at healthcare reform will change these issues because economic inequalities are maintained by a host of other social systems that may remain virtually unchanged by reforms in healthcare. The median wealth for white, black, and Latino women is a clear indicator of the economic inequalities between women. While white women have a median wealth of $41,000, black and Latino women have $100 and $120, respectively.[8] This unequal access to healthcare between white and non-white women is a direct consequence of racist and sexist aspects within the societal structure today, as well as many aspects of white and male privilege that accentuate the discriminatory racist and sexist practices. McIntosh’s discourse on white privilege aids in understanding the issues surrounding differential healthcare coverage among women and how economic inequality fuels these differences.
Block also highlights that all women will continually be faced with greater risk from childbirth even under conditions where equal access is provided. This is important to point out because it highlights how women are truly in a bind where many of the common practices, like unnecessary C-sections, have become ubiquitous in maternal healthcare and produce great risk for even those mothers that have the best healthcare coverage. This particular point focuses on the issue of healthcare equality on the whole rather than the specific problem of economic influences on maternal healthcare risks. It is important to view this issue through a broader perspective because it aids in highlighting how this is specifically a female issue and also aids in drawing links to this issue on the global scale. Maternal healthcare and sexism in healthcare systems is a worldwide issue that needs to be addressed. While each nation will need to take different approaches to issues of maternal healthcare, as McIntosh comments on the notion of change, the alteration of issues in maternal healthcare will require fundamental restructuring of systems that perpetuate inequalities in the first place.
Many of the points that Block presents in her article are shocking to see to for the United States. It seems unacceptable that as a global leader the U.S. still stands behind 40 other nations in the world today in its ability to prevent death from pregnancy-related causes. The rate of deaths per 100,000 births that doubled from 1987 to 2006 should not continue to rise and many changes will be necessary to turn this around.[9] The diminishment of affects on health from economic disparity in society will be only one among many integral measures needed to implement effective change in both maternal healthcare and the national healthcare system as a whole.

[1] Jennifer Block, “Too Many Women Dying in U.S. While Having Babies,” Time, March 12, 2010, (http://www.time.com/time/health/article/0,8599,1971633,00.html).
[2] Jennifer Block, “Too Many Women Dying in U.S. While Having Babies.”
[3] Jennifer Block, “Too Many Women Dying in U.S. While Having Babies.”
[4] M.J. Stephey, “Why Sexism Kills,” Time, November 11, 2009, (http://www.time.com/time/world/article/0,8599,1937336,00.html).
[5] M.J. Stephey, “Why Sexism Kills.”
[6] Jennifer Block, “Too Many Women Dying in U.S. While Having Babies.”
[7] Peggy McIntosh, “White Privilege: Unpacking the Invisible Knapsack,” 1988.
[8] Class Notes 3/11/10
[9] Jennifer Block, “Too Many Women Dying in U.S. While Having Babies.”

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