Death by Childbirth Declining Around the Globe

If it is (I'm sceptical), I applaud the news.  In the 21st century it is entirely unacceptable that women are still dying while trying to give birth to children!  Children - and their mothers - are our most precious commodity.  Without them - there is no 'us.'  There will be no world of  - people - without women having children.  So why are women (and often their unborn children with them) still dying?  Why has this not become a critical political issue, particularly in countries where the birth rate has dropped drastically?

Story from The New York Times
Maternal Deaths Decline Sharply Across the Globe
By DENISE GRADY
Published: April 13, 2010

For the first time in decades, researchers are reporting a significant drop worldwide in the number of women dying each year from pregnancy and childbirth, to about 342,900 in 2008 from 526,300 in 1980.  [Big caveat:  In the United States the rate rose from 12 deaths per 100,000 live births in 1980 to 17 in 2008.  Article from Reuters, April 14, 2010.  Why?  Certain pundits would have us believe it's because more women are choosing to have delivery by C-section; evidently they think this is a lazy woman's way of delivering a baby.  Yeah, right.]


As you know, I've been spending a lot of time lately delving into the ancestry of my family.  Yeah - I heard about and read about women who died after being worn out by year after year of childbirth - way back in the Olden Days, of women in their 50s giving birth to children because menopause had not yet caught them and given them some blessed relief!  But until I started digging around in my family's past, I didn't realize --

My paternal great-great grandmother Marie Louise Adele Seguin dit Laderoute, who was born about 1828 in Quebec, bore the following chlidren for Antoine Villeneuve:

Edward, about 1851
David (my great-grandfather, who emigrated to the US in about 1878 or 1879 and changed his name to Newton (ville = town; neuve = new), about 1853
Joseph, about 1856
Noe (also called Noah in the English translation), about 1858
Mary (Marie), about 1861
Peter, about 1863
Nettie, about 1874
Benjamin, about 1877

Benjamin was born when Marie Louise Adele was about 50 years old, possibly 51.  She bore at least these eight children, and perhaps more who may have died in-between the 10-year censuses in Canada, which started in 1851.  (I could not locate a record for the family in 1851, 1861 or 1881; I have census information from 1871, 1891 and 1901, when Marie Louise Adele was about 73 years old).

My paternal great-grandmother, Laura Bailey Newton (married David Villeneuve a/k/a David Newton in 1880), bore the following children:

Pheobe, about 1881
Florence, about 1884,
Frederick, about 1885
Gertrude, about 1887
Edith, about 1891
Myrtle, about 1892
Joseph Leonard (also known as Leonard Joseph), about 1896
Margaret, about 1902
Pearl, about 1903

Nine children.  I know Margaret died because she was not listed on the 1910 U.S. Census and she was too young to have been married at that point.

On the maternal side of the family I haven't advanced as far in my research. My mother's maternal grandmother, Mary Makoski (various spellings - Makuskie, Makuski, Makeskie), bore the following children:

Florence, about 1895
Dora, about 1897
Martha (my maternal grandmother), June 12, 1899
Edwin, about 1902
Walter, about 1903
Vladdie, about 1904
Lucy, about 1905
Bonaslav, about 1909

Martha, my maternal grandmother, had eight children - seven daughters (Lorraine, Ruth, Caroline - my mom, Christina a/k/a Christine, Dorothy (Dolly), Lillian, and Marjorie (Margie)), all of whom survived childhood, and her last child, a boy, who either died while being born or shortly after, according to what my mom told me.

My mother's paternal grandmother, Josephine Jablonski, bore at least 17 children according to the 1900 U.S. census.  I have record of the following children:

Annastasia, about 1878 (did not survive to the 1890 Census)
Severy (a/k/a Severin), about 1880
Balbina, about 1883
Salomia, about 1884
Walter, about 186
Hannah, about 1887
Martha, about 1889
Johanna, about 1891
Susannah, about 1892
Benon, about 1895
Julia, about 1897
Joseph (my maternal grandfather), about 1898
Tekla, about 1898 (I don't know if Joseph and Tekla were twins, or just born about 10 months apart)
William, 1900
Theresa, about 1902
Esther, about 1904

I'm not listing all of these offspring to toot the horn of my prolific family.  I find it sad, actually, that once my ancestresses said "I do" - they sure as hell did - to a life of constant pregnancy until they either wore out and died from nearly yearly pregnancies (which none of them did, amazing to me) or managed to reach menopause - or perhaps they kicked their husbands out of the bedroom for awhile.   The numbers of children that these women bore don't lie.  They demonstrate how it was back in the day of little or no birth control for "proper" married women (other than abstinence - ha - you can see how good that worked!) and "timing."  Unfortunately, this is a situation that is still very much with us today in countries that can least afford to continue to produce more children than can be sustained.  Aw, don't get me started.