Addicting Info – U.S. Maternal Death Rate Now Highest In The Western World, Thanks To GOP War On Women

via Addicting Info – U.S. Maternal Death Rate Now Highest In The Western World, Thanks To GOP War On Women.

AUTHOR: RANDA MORRIS – JUNE 8, 2015

Worldwide, fewer and fewer women are dying during pregnancy or from complications related to childbirth. In fact, women living almost anywhere in the developed world are safer today, than they were in the year 2000. Here in the United States, however,women are twice as likely to die during or after pregnancy, than they were 15 years ago. Thanks to the regressive party, otherwise known as the GOP, the United States is moving backwards, not forwards, when it comes to women’s health.

According to the latest State of the World’s Mothers report, released in May, 2015, the U.S. has the highest rate of maternal deathin any western nation. Women in the U.S. are ten times more likely to die from pregnancy as women living in Poland or Norway. Compared to women living in Belarus, the country with the lowest rate of maternal deaths, women in the U.S. are twenty times more likely to die before, during, or immediately after childbirth.

Globally, the rate of maternal deaths has been steadily declining over the past two decades. Around the world, the rate of maternal deaths has been reduced by 45 percent since the mid-1990’s. Meanwhile, a woman’s risk of death from pregnancy in the U.S. today is double what it was a decade and a half ago.

It gets worse, though. The rate of maternal deaths in the United States is calculated according to the number of deaths reported annually. According to a report published by the US National Library of Medicine and the National Institutes of Health, at least 38 percent of pregnancy-related deaths are not reported as such in the United States. Research also estimates that at least half of all maternal deaths are not listed as “maternal deaths” on the death certificate in cases where the fetus was not delivered, when a woman died more than a week after delivery, or in cases where a woman died from a condition that existed before pregnancy, which was worsened because of pregnancy.

Disturbingly, there is no federal law that requires U.S. hospitals to keep records regarding maternal deaths. So while we know that the maternal death is climbing in the U.S., we don’t really know how many women are dying as a result of a pregnancy.

What we do know is that in spite of all the advances in medicine and technology, the risk of pregnancy-related death in the US is going up every year, not down.

The State of the World’s Mothers report, which is published yearly by the nonprofit Save The Children Foundation, ranks 179 nations on ‘the Mother’s Index,’ illustrating where in the world “women and children fare best.” The U.S. has been steadily falling in rank, since the year 2000, when the study first began.

In 2000 the U.S. ranked among the top ten countries in the world for women’s health and well-being. It was listed as the 4th best country on earth for mothers’ health on the Mother’s Index. Only Norway, Canada and Australia ranked higher.

In the 15 years since the first State of the World’s Mothers report was published, the U.S. has dropped to number 33 on theMother’s Index. America now ranks 61 in maternal health, falling behind every other Western nation when it comes to protecting the health of pregnant women. In the year 2000, a US woman’s risk of death from pregnancy-related causes was 1 in 3500. Today that risk has risen to 1 in 1800, according to this year’s annual report.

The republican War on Women is not just a catchphrase used by the left. Every war has casualties, and this one is no different. Government restrictions on reproductive rights have a direct impact on women’s health and well-being. While national statistics can be informational, it’s also important to understand that not all states are equal, when it comes to maternal deaths.

A 2014 report by the Center for Reproductive Rights shows that states that have the highest number of abortion restrictions, score lowest on women’s overall health. On the contrary, states with the least amount of restrictions on abortion are doing a much better job of protecting women’s health.

This chart shows how abortion restrictions impact women’s health in the states:

The state of Vermont, which does not place any restrictions on abortion, has the second lowest maternal mortality rate in the country, with just 2.6 deaths per 100,000 live births. At the other end of the spectrum, the rate of maternal deaths in Oklahoma, a state with 14 laws designed to restrict a woman’s right to control her own reproductive health, ranks 48th in the country. Oklahoma has a maternal death rate that is almost ten times higher than Vermont, at 20.1.

The state of Maine also places very few restrictions on a woman’s right to choose. As of January of 2015, the Guttenmacher Institute reports that the only restrictions in the state are in regards to the use of public funding to pay for abortion services. Maine has the distinction of being the state with the lowest rate of maternal deaths, at 1.2 per 100,000 live births.

In contrast, states that undermine women’s rights, including their right to decide when or if they will have a child, have maternal death rates that are as much as 20 times higher than those in Maine. Mississippi, which has some of the most restrictive laws in the country when it comes to women’s reproductive health, has a maternal death rate of 19.0. Other states with 11 or more restrictions on abortion access also have alarmingly high maternal death rates. Those states include Michigan, which has amaternal death rate of 21.0 per 100,000 live births, the highest among the 50 states. Georgia’s maternal death rate is 20.9. In Louisiana, the maternal death rate is 17.9.  Arkansas and Idaho have maternal death rates of 16.0 and 15.0, respectively, according to the most recent report on maternal deaths by state.

According to the research from the Center for Reproductive Rights, states that have six or fewer laws regarding abortion access rank highest in the country for women’s health, overall. States that have 11 or more laws restricting a woman’s right to control her own body, rank at the bottom of the country, when it comes to women’s health and well-being.

This data tells us that, while the maternal death rate is climbing in the United States, not all states are equally responsible for the increase. As a nation it’s time for us to come together to ensure that the health and well being of all women is protected, no matter where in the United States they choose to live.

The United States also needs to catch up to the rest of the civilized world when it comes to collecting complete and accurate information on maternal deaths. More than a decade ago, the United States set a goal of reducing the maternal death rate to 3.3 per 100,000, by 2010. If this had actually been a priority for state and federal representatives, then accurate data collection would also have been a priority. But that never happened.

The reality is that saving women’s lives is not a priority for too many U.S. representatives. Religious fanatics elected to office view women as baby-makers, nothing more, nothing less. The life a woman matters to the extent that it doesn’t interfere with a man’s right to procreate by using her body. That becomes all too clear when Republican politicians go to great lengths to protect rapistsand child molesters, or when they advocate for laws that would allow men to sue women for not giving birth to their fertilized sperm. In their warped minds, a woman’s body is not her own. A woman’s body only exists to be used by men, in an act of procreation. If the woman does not want to be impregnated, if she doesn’t want to birth a kid, as far as republicans are concerned, she can go ahead and die.

While the rest of the civilized world is working to protect women from the risks associated with pregnancy and childbirth, regressive US republicans are working to ensure that women birth those babies, or die trying. As a nation we cannot accept these horrifying statistics. We can not accept Republican policies that fail to protect the lives of the women we love because of their religious devotion to the idea that someone that was never born is just as important as someone who is obviously born.

*Featured image credit: freefoto.com, creative commons license 3.0

 

just a day at the beach…

via CHRONOS & CHAOS – tuxedoducklinq: hockpock: qualiachameleon: ….

tuxedoducklinq:

hockpock:

qualiachameleon:

rocketumbl:

Theo Jansen  Strandbeest

Side note: These don’t have motors. They’re completely momentum/wind-powered and literally just wander around beaches unsupervised like giant abstract monsters.

these are both amazing and COMPLETELY TERRIFYING

IF I SAW ONE OF THESE COMING I WOULD CRY

 

The Bend by Donnie Nunley

via The Bend by Donnie Nunley – Chronicles of a Love Affair with Nature.

(Source: outdoormagic)

 

Rydal Cave, Cumbria, UK

via Rainbow Coach | lillylalaloulou: Rydal Cave, Cumbria, UK….

lillylalaloulou:

Instagram   VSCO Grid  Tumblr

(Source: lillylalaloulou, via philotheoristic)

 

Brachycephalus: miniaturized frogs

via Cool Critters — science-junkie: Brachycephalus: miniaturized….

Following nearly 5 years of exploration in mountainous areas of the southern Brazilian Atlantic Rainforest, a team of researchers has uncovered seven new species of a highly miniaturized, brightly colored frog genus known asBrachycephalus.

These frogs are among the smallest terrestrial vertebrates, with adult sizes often not exceeding 1 cm in length, leading to a variety of changes in their body structure, such as reduction in the number of toes and fingers. In addition, many species of Brachycephalus are brightly colored, possibly as a warning to the presence of a highly potent neurotoxin in their skin known as tetrodotoxin.

Read more  –  Full Article

 

– It’s Shark Week!

via – It’s Shark Week! That time of year where….

It’s Shark Week! That time of year where television networks pretend sharks are the most dangerous animal out there. Here we compare how many people are killed by sharks per year versus the two deadliest animals for humans – mosquitoes and other people. Want to learn more? Watch the video here where we highlight 15 of the deadliest animals out there.

 

This Map Shows Where America’s Hate Groups Live And Operate

via Active Hate Groups By State – Business Insider.

AMANDA MACIAS Mar. 3, 2014

Last week, the Southern Poverty Law Center (SPLC) released a state-by-state interactive map showing where so-called hate groups operate in the United States.

The SPLC found 939 hate groups were active in America, and it defined these groups as those that aren’t necessarily violent but have beliefs or practices that attack or malign an entire class of people. SPLC made the list using hate group publications and websites, citizen and police reports, field sources, and news reports.

Mark Potok, the author of the report and senior fellow at the SPLC, told Business Insider that the number of hate groups in each state more or less correlates with the state’s population.

“Another thing to consider when analyzing this data is that certain hate groups reside in particular areas. The Klan will almost always be in rural areas whereas, the Black Separatists are mostly in the cities,” Potok said.

There are two hate groups to watch in 2014, Potok says — the white supremacists in the American Freedom Party and the small but violent racist skinhead gang called Crew 41.

Racist Southern California skinheads initially founded the American Freedom political party in 2009 with the goal of deporting immigrants. The group’s political platform represents “the interests of White Americans” and includes a stance on taxes, drones, environmental pollution and ironically, calls for a free society where “people live their day to day lives as they wish, without being molded like guinea pigs.”

“They have for years, been running in political elections and haven’t done all that well. They have however, recently gathered the top influential white supremacists to run their board and are becoming more aggressive about winning elections,” Potok said.

Crew 41 — aka “Die Auserwählten” meaning “the chosen” in German — was created and organized online by a pop-up gang last summer. Multiple crimes have since occurred and members have expressed the desire to kill sex offenders. In South Carolina, members of Crew 41 reportedly shot and stabbed a middle-aged couple because the husband was on a registered sex offender list.

SEE ALSO: The Incredible Story Of How White Supremacists Almost Took Over A Tiny North Dakota Town

 

We Must Stop Allowing Far Right Conservative Christians to Dumb Down and Radicalize This Country

via We Must Stop Allowing Far Right Conservative Christians to Dumb Down and Radicalize This Country.

June 1, 2014 By Allen Clifton

They believe that “God speaks to them,” that laws should be taken from religion, that homosexuality is a sin, that women shouldn’t have control over their own bodies and that all other religions besides theirs are wrong. Oh, I’m talking about Islamic radicals, not conservative Christians.  Though I could see how someone might confuse the two.  They do have striking similarities. Kind of ironic, isn’t it?

Especially when you consider that many conservative Christians loathe Muslims – all Muslims.  See, to a good deal of them, all Muslims are “Islamic radicals.”  Though I’m sure many of them are unaware that there are more Muslims found in south and southeast Asia than the Middle East.  But I doubt many of them are “alerted” by someone they meet from Indonesia. And while Islamic radicals do pose a threat to the United States, mostly from afar, many conservative Christians pose a threat to this country domestically. These people, empowered by the tea party in the last few years, are doing everything they can to dumb down this country and turn it into some kind of theocracy. Instead of having debates on how to combat climate change, we’re stuck trying to convince tens of millions of people that God didn’t use a tornado to “punish” sinners.  Instead of figuring out how to make the United States a world leader in math and science, we’re debating whether or not the story of Noah’s ark should be in the chapter following the mapping of human DNA in science books.  Instead of embracing some of the most educated and intelligent among us, millions of Americans would rather listen to a bearded redneck from backwoods Louisiana tell them how the United States needs to be more “godly.”  And somehow “being godly” seems to mostly revolve around a strong disdain for homosexuals. It’s absurd. When we have a debate about science in this country we shouldn’t have to spend time debating someone who thinks the Flintstones is a documentary, believing that humans and dinosaurs roamed the Earth together just a few thousand years ago.  But that’s exactly what we’re having to do.

The vast majority of the world’s scientists agree that humans are causing climate change, a fact that’s really indisputable at this point.  Well, unless you’re one of the Christian conservatives who believes that God determines the weather or ridiculously tries to claim that the world is cooling – not warming.  That’s the funny thing about a lot of these climate deniers.  Half of them admit that the world is warming but say that it’s “natural,” while the other half tries to claim that the world is actually getting colder. Meanwhile nearly every climate scientist, and most people who actually believe in science, think both groups are complete idiots. The same goes for our Constitution.  These people continue to claim that this nation was founded on Christianity, yet the word “Christian” doesn’t appear even once in our entire Constitution. And no, pointing out the reference to “the creator” in the Declaration of Independence doesn’t “prove” that this is a Christian nation.  These people don’t seem to understand that the Declaration of Independence and our Constitution are two completely different things. And let’s face it, when it comes to homosexuality, if they had their way it would be illegal – just like it is in many Muslim countries. I often get emails from conservatives telling me that I don’t “show them any respect” in my articles. And they’re right. I used to, but I can’t anymore. Not too long ago I actually engaged in far more debates with conservatives than I do now. But many of the ones I encountered had become so ridiculous that I simply couldn’t take them seriously any longer. When I say to someone, “Well, essentially every astrophysicist agrees that (fill in the scientific fact)” and their response is, “Well, the Bible says…” I usually just toss my hands up in the air and walk away.  To me, that’s like discussing something in English with someone who only speaks Chinese. We’re not going to get anywhere because we’re not speaking the same language. But the thing that bugs me most about their ignorance isn’t that they believe in this nonsense, it’s that their stupidity is taking the United States down with them.  While the rest of the world is pumping out more engineers and scientists, we have tens of millions of people who believe getting an education is tantamount to “liberal indoctrination.” They literally believe that education has a “liberal bias” essentially because facts don’t often support their ideology.  To most people, that might lead them to question whether or not what they believe is accurate.  But not to conservatives.  Oh, no.  To them, if facts don’t corroborate their ideology, the facts are wrong or biased. And they’re only getting worse.  But miraculously they’ve managed to do one thing: They’ve added a new kink in the theory of evolution by somehow managing to get dumber over time, not smarter.

…looking far more the penalty than the pleasure

via Steampunk Vehicles.

steampunkvehicles:

I have seen one of these sociable monowheels at the bicycle museum in Canberra.  I bet I could ride it with a skilled partner.

(via johnnypayphone)

 

Colossal Black Hole From the Early Universe Outgrows Its Host Galaxy

via. dailygalaxy

July 10, 2015

A new discovery runs counter to most observations about black holes, which are massive areas of space with extraordinarily strong gravity that can pull in anything — even light. In most cases, black holes and their host galaxies expand at the same rate. But astronomers have spotted a super-sized black hole in the early universe that grew much faster than its host galaxy.

This particular black hole formed in the early universe, roughly two billion years after the Big Bang. An international research group made the discovery during a project to map the growth of supermassive black holes across cosmic time. The team included astronomers from Yale University, ETH Zurich, the Max-Planck Institute in Germany, Harvard University, the University of Hawaii, INAF-Osservatorio Astronomico di Roma, and Oxford University.

“Our survey was designed to observe the average objects, not the exotic ones,” said C. Megan Urry, Yale’s Israel Munson Professor of Astrophysics and co-author of a study about the phenomenon in the journal Science. “This project specifically targeted moderate black holes that inhabit typical galaxies today. It was quite a shock to see such a ginormous black hole in such a deep field.”

Deep-field surveys are intended to look at faint galaxies; they point at small areas of the sky for a longer period of time, meaning the total volume of space being sampled is relatively small.

This particular black hole, located in the galaxy CID-947, is among the most massive black holes ever found. It measures nearly 7 billion solar masses (a solar mass is equivalent to the mass of our Sun).

However, it was the mass of the surrounding galaxy that most surprised the research team. “The measurements correspond to the mass of a typical galaxy,” said lead author Benny Trakhtenbrot, a researcher at ETH Zurich’s Institute for Astronomy. “We therefore have a gigantic black hole within a normal-size galaxy.”

Most galaxies, including our own Milky Way, have a black hole at their center, holding millions to billions of solar masses. Not only does the new study challenge previous notions about the way host galaxies grow in relation to black holes, it also challenges earlier suggestions that the radiation emitted by expanding black holes curtails the creation of stars.

Stars were still forming in CID-947, the researchers said, and the galaxy could continue to grow. They said CID-947 could be a precursor of the most extreme, massive systems observed in today’s local universe, such as the galaxy NGC 1277 in the Perseus constellation, 220 million light years from the Milky Way. But if so, they said, the growth of the black hole still greatly anticipated the growth of the surrounding galaxy, contrary to what astronomers thought previously.

Urry and her colleagues credited the W.M. Keck Observatory in Hawaii and the Chandra COSMOS legacy survey in aiding the team’s work. “The sensitivity and versatility of Keck’s new infrared spectrometer, MOSFIRE, was critical to this discovery,” Urry said.

The black hole at the center of the super giant elliptical galaxy M87 shoen at the top of the page in cluster Virgo fifty million light-years away, is the most massive black hole for which a precise mass has been measured -6.6 billion solar masses. Orbiting the galaxy is an abnormally large population of about 12,000 globular clusters, compared to 150-200 globular clusters orbiting the Milky Way.

The team theorized that the M87 black hole grew to its massive size by merging with several other black holes. M87 is the largest, most massive galaxy in the nearby universe, and is thought to have been formed by the merging of 100 or so smaller galaxies. The M87 black hole’s large size and relative proximity, astronomers think that it could be the first black hole that they could actually “see.”

The Daily Galaxy via Yale University

Image credit: NASA/Canada-France-Hawaii Telescope, J.-C. Cuillandre (CFHT).