The 51% Factor: Pregnancy, Power & Health

In the U.S. and most of the devel­oped world, approx­i­mately 51% of the pop­u­la­tion is female. Most females give birth at some point in their lives, although, in any year, only about 2% of the pop­u­la­tion gives birth.

No one liv­ing on earth got here any other way than ges­ta­tion, so there ought to be some power attached to being part of that 51%. His­tor­i­cally, it might be said that the power has been merely for survival…the good breed­ers sur­vived long enough to pro­duce heirs and those who lived on knew where the roots and fruit grew.

Only women can make more peo­ple with their bodies.

Here are some things to consider:

• Women make people
• Women’s health and fit­ness before preg­nancy affects whether the preg­nancy is healthy
• Women’s health and fit­ness dur­ing preg­nancy affects her life­time health and that of her offspring
• Mater­nal sur­vival is impor­tant to off­spring well-being
• Mater­nal health and fit­ness affects mater­nal adap­ta­tion and thereby off­spring well-being

Thus, is it not a san­guine notion that the health and sur­vival of women is crit­i­cal to the health of every­one? After all, the health of nations is asso­ci­ated with this slight major­ity of females, and the wealth of nations is asso­ci­ated with its health.

The good news is that peo­ple work­ing from this under­stand­ing are mak­ing some head­way around the globe. Recently, the World Health Orga­ni­za­tion noted that mater­nal death among preg­nant and birthing women world-wide has been dra­mat­i­cally reduced from the 1980’s to recently. This is very good news!

Here is the inter­est­ing foot­note:  Mater­nal death in the U.S. has risen 42% in the same period. While the absolute num­bers remain small, this is a dis­turb­ing pic­ture. What could be caus­ing this?

Time will tell if we can fig­ure it out and fix it. I ven­ture to sug­gest some direc­tions for consideration:

• The ele­vated cesarean birth rate with its sequel­lae of car­dio­vas­cu­lar and immune sys­tem disorders
• Obe­sity
• Meta­bolic syndromes
• Dia­betes
• Heart dis­ease

Why am I hope­ful, then? I see among our cur­rent edu­cated gen­er­a­tion of new moms and moms-to-be a will­ing­ness to exert their influ­ence – as breed­ers – over the health care scene. They want less tech­no­log­i­cal birth. They want sup­port. They want more infor­ma­tion. They want to be healthy. These are won­der­ful things. I salute these young women…they also make my job eas­ier in the process.

In addi­tion, I see among young health care prac­ti­tion­ers an under­stand­ing of the value of these things. Among prac­ti­tion­ers work­ing in pub­lic health clin­ics there is a sense of des­per­a­tion on the one hand that the poor and indi­gent have no capac­ity or will to take care of them­selves. On the other hand, the first step is always edu­ca­tion and there are a lot of peo­ple work­ing on this issue.

Which brings me to the clos­ing point:  How do we bring more resources and intel­li­gence to help­ing women be healthy, pre­pare for preg­nancy, have healthy babies, reduce preg­nancy com­pli­ca­tions, and improve infant and mater­nal death rates? I, for one, will keep blog­ging on this issue. You, I hope, will vote for peo­ple who under­stand this issue. The polit­i­cal power and will is in our hands.

51% of us are women…some day 51% of us can set priorities