HW # 34 - Some Initial Thoughts On Birth

In the article “Mothers-to-Be Are Getting the Message” about how a text messaging program called text4baby can help educate pregnant women and new mothers
on taking care of their babies, the reason it says a program like this is needed is that “the United States ranks 30th in the world in infant mortality rates – between Poland and Slovakia.” It also says that “28,000 children born in the U.S. each year die before their first birthday – and many more face disabilities and serious life-long health problems, often because they are born prematurely or at low birth weights.” This probably sounds surprising to middle and upper middle class white people. Black people know all about it. My father’s sister who grew up in Detroit got pregnant in high school. The baby died. She didn’t tell anybody about it until she was six months pregnant. Then her mother took her to a doctor but that was a late time to start getting medical care.

I bet that most of the 28,000 babies who die in this country have poor mothers and a lot of them are minorities. This makes sense because if the mothers were white and middle class it would be some kind of emergency or embarrassment for America. The two reasons I can think of that causes all these deaths are the education system and the health care system. If girls have better education, they are not going to want to get pregnant in high school. If there is free health care the way there is in a lot of other countries the girls or women can have regular doctors. Poor people don’t have regular doctors. A lot just go to emergency wards of hospitals if they are really sick, hurt or dying. Having this text4baby health care advice for pregnant women and mothers sounds like a great idea but especially for poorer people who don’t have regular doctors and who don’t buy a lot of books to tell them what to do.

Questions I would like to explore in this unit:

How is the health care for pregnant women who are poor in countries with low infant mortality rates?

What is the health care like for babies once they are born in countries with low infant mortality rates?

A lot of black children have been raised by their grandmothers. I don’t know if this is still happening as much as it was when my dad was growing up. Is it? (My father’s sister is bringing up her grandchild because the father of the child who was her son is dead. The mother disappeared.)

Is a reason why male conservatives are so against abortion that they want to be able to control women?

What percentage of babies are born as a result of an unplanned pregnancy and how do their grades as they grow up compare with babies whose parents had the intention of having them?