On Bad Therapy & Correcting Mistakes

Hello all!

I wanted to pop in and say that I will not be publishing an article this week as I am reading Abigail Shrier’s new book, “Bad Therapy: Why the Kids Aren’t Growing Up.” I want to give that my full attention so I can provide a measured take for all those who have not done a deep read themselves and want to understand Shrier’s main arguments.

However, I would like to come here to correct a misleading statistic that I parroted in a recent piece of mine considering maternal health outcomes and birth trauma. A recent Wall Street Journal op-ed detailed a new study that calls the CDC’s maternal death statistics I used into question:

“A new study this month in the American Journal of Obstetrics and Gynecology shows that oft-cited U.S. maternal-mortality statistics are inflated owing to discrepancies in how pregnancy deaths are recorded.

The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention’s National Vital Statistics System reports that maternal-mortality rates in the U.S. have roughly tripled since 2001, to 32.9 per 100,000 live births in 2021. This is nearly three times as high as rates in other developed countries—but, as the study concludes, it’s largely a statistical artifact.

Deaths among pregnant women or new mothers are often classified as “maternal” even if they owe to other causes, such as cancer or pre-existing conditions. The culprit is a check box that states added to death certificates in 2003 to identify women who had died while pregnant or between 42 days and a year of when their pregnancy ended.”

There you have it. Administrative errors have fooled many, including myself, into believing that being pregnant in America is a risk. The authors of the study found that the maternal mortality rate has really remained flat since 1999 when 10.2 per 100,000 live births ended in maternal death. In 2021, that number was 10.4, about level with other developed nations.

In fact, deaths related to labor and pregnancy themselves have fallen precipitously over time, according to the researchers. However, pre-existing conditions and risks during pregnancy have gone up — think obesity and hypertension, diabetes, high maternal age, maternal drug overdose, abortions gone wrong, partner violence, etc.

We shouldn’t be worried about being pregnant or giving birth, in other words. (I’m looking at you abortion peddlers!) Women were made for that. But it should be clear to everyone that we were not made to be obese, on drugs, or beat by our partners. Let’s work on getting those stats down rather than fear-mongering about the horrors of childbirth.