Pure fantasy.
You are guessing at the cause, and also surmising that American women are inferior to their counterparts worldwide in their ability to bear healthy children....yet offer no proof in support.
If you want to say that those countries that are socialist in nature, do a better job of caring for the citizens, providing superior prenatal care, providing better nutrition, better education, less economic stress during and after pregnancy, etc.....that would be an argument that would logically follow.
On a lark, for the sake of argument, say you are right, that pregnant women in America don't take care of themselves as well as women in other modern countries.
Please, tell us exactly why that is....
See, no matter how you slice it, we have a problem that is not getting better, and under the Bush administration, it is getting worse....we are failing to create a society in which the unborn child is taken care of by pregnant women...all the while the Christian right talks endlessly about the need to protect the unborn child.
Your suggestion that physicians wanting more money for health-care to help cope with this problem for purely selfish motivations, is a slur of the worst kind...
What have we seen under Bush? Increase in the number of people living in poverty, increase in the number of children who die shortly after birth...and the compassionate conservatives want to blame the mothers....
Oy freaking vey...
You are guessing at the cause, and also surmising that American women are inferior to their counterparts worldwide in their ability to bear healthy children....yet offer no proof in support.
If you want to say that those countries that are socialist in nature, do a better job of caring for the citizens, providing superior prenatal care, providing better nutrition, better education, less economic stress during and after pregnancy, etc.....that would be an argument that would logically follow.
On a lark, for the sake of argument, say you are right, that pregnant women in America don't take care of themselves as well as women in other modern countries.
Please, tell us exactly why that is....
See, no matter how you slice it, we have a problem that is not getting better, and under the Bush administration, it is getting worse....we are failing to create a society in which the unborn child is taken care of by pregnant women...all the while the Christian right talks endlessly about the need to protect the unborn child.
Your suggestion that physicians wanting more money for health-care to help cope with this problem for purely selfish motivations, is a slur of the worst kind...
What have we seen under Bush? Increase in the number of people living in poverty, increase in the number of children who die shortly after birth...and the compassionate conservatives want to blame the mothers....
Oy freaking vey...
Quote from drmarkan:
Z10 printed another article like this about 6 months ago and never replied to my answer. Following is the post I put on the last thread:
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Quote from ZZZzzzzzzz:
So your defense of our high infant mortality rates is that we are a drug addicted alcoholic society?
ROTFLAMO.
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No my defense is that it is not a lack of health care that causes the high infant mortality rate, but rather the irresponsibility of individuals who are pregnant. Many drug addicts refuse pre-natal care because they are getting high, and don't want it known that they are.
Aside from malformations, which is the leading cause of infant mortality, low birth weight babies are the second cause. What is the leading cause of malformations? Low birth weight is. I did not mention in my previous post smoking which was a huge error on my part because smoking during pregnancy is a major contributor to low birth weight.
The leading PREVENTABLE cause of birth defects is Fetal Alcohol Syndrome. 1 in 30 pregnant women admit to risk drinking which means more than 1 oz. of alcohol per day. Yet, FAS or other alcohol related problems effect a larger percentage of children being born with birth defects.
It has also been estimated by the CDC that 1 in 5 pregnant women used some sort of illegal substance during their pregnancy with cocaine being the leader.
After that, teenage pregnancy is another leader because teenagers themselves are not always fully developed therefore they cannot properly nourish their babies causing low birth weight. I would venture a guess that many teenagers do not seek out prenatal care in the first trimester because they do not want to tell anyone that they are pregnant. Alcohol and drug use also was found to be high in this group.
20% of babies with birth defects are caused by inheriting it or chromosomal changes. This is hardly preventable.
AIDS is the ninth leading cause of death for children ages 1-4.
With all this said, the leading causes seem to center around a theme of doing things that you shouldn't be doing when you are pregnant. They believe that infant mortality can be reduced by 10 to 25% if women would just quit smoking while they are pregnant. That in itself would probably put us lower than Cuba for the mortality rate. It would probably makes us the lowest. Who in this country does not know that smoking is bad for you? If you don't, instead of spending more money on health care as you see it, we really need to open up more mental health facilities and start admitting these people because they are a danger to themselves. Or, we can realize that they do not care and choose to kill their own babies. We can't stop them from doing this because they have "constitutional" rights to protect them. It is really sad that a child does not have a chance for life because the mother does not want to do what is best for the baby. I always see commercials offering pre-natal care to mothers who need assistance, but if they are not going to quit their bad habits, there is nothing that can be done.
All of the information that I got came from the Centers for Disease Control and the Physician's Committee for Responsible Medicine. I will tell you that the PCRM also believes that we need to put more money into healthcare, but I disagree. One reason is, of course physicians want more money sent their way, who doesn't, and two, we would have more money for pre-natal care (which is offered already to women in need anyways), if we didn't have to spend so much caring for the children who are already affected. Pre-natal care is a great way to prevent many of the problems, nobody can disagree with that. The decision of the mother not to take the advice of their doctor and continue doing things to jeopardize their child's life is the problem. No amount of money is going to stop a drug/alcohol/cigarette addict from continuing their dangerous lifestyle.
