Taught a class years ago where I brought up the maternal mortality rate in the not too distant past and *immediately* saw half a room of 19 year old girls turn their heads as one and glare at half a room of 19 year old boys.
One reason i think everyone should take an archaeology class is to internalise with tangible examples that there is no pure, natural past utopia and that antibiotics and vaccines are what stand between us and a 50% child mortality rate and scores of women dying needlessly during pregn and birth
Catherine Frieman
Leeds is now the subject of a major inquiry into maternity. I previously reported on its decade long pursuit of 'normal birth' ideology that saw it have the lowest number of caesareans while stillbirths and baby deaths soared to the worst nationally www.thetimes.com/article/f3af...
In the period that Leeds maternity unit had the lowest number of caesareans, its rate of stillbirths and newborn deaths became the worst nationally
