[Congressional Record Volume 142, Number 132 (Monday, September 23, 1996)]
[House]
[Pages H10764-H10765]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]




                            SAFE MOTHERHOOD

  The SPEAKER pro tempore. Under a previous order of the House, the 
gentlewoman from Colorado [Mrs. Schroeder] is recognized for 5 minutes.
  Mrs. SCHROEDER. Madam Speaker, I take the floor today to talk about a 
bill I will be introducing this week dealing with safe motherhood. When 
women first got the right to vote in this country, one of the first 
things they focused on was how many American women were dying in 
childbirth. In 1913 alone, the statistics were horrifying, because more 
women died in this country in childbirth than any other cause except 
for tuberculosis which we all know was running almost as an epidemic. 
The women, after they got the right to vote, found that this Congress 
was spending more money on hog cholera than they were on safe 
motherhood. There was a flurry of activity, a lot was done, and 
unfortunately we really have not done much to focus on this since. I 
have asked for several reports to be done and when we look at those 
reports, it is really quite startling.
  First, we really do not know much about the condition of safe 
motherhood. Even Health and Human Services estimates that what we do 
know is probably only about 50 percent correct. They would guess that 
our very high rate of maternal deaths is probably double what it really 
is. And that is because each State keeps statistics, and because of 
insurance and everything, they tend to want to keep the statistics very 
tightly, so they probably in many places count maternal deaths only 
when they happen directly during the pregnancy rather than within the 
year of the pregnancy that aggravated a preexisting condition or 
something else. In our country we are more apt to blame it on the 
condition than on the pregnancy. As a consequence, as high as our 
statistics are for the developed world, they are still probably much 
higher than that if we really knew the truth. So the first thing I am 
going to do in my bill is try and get uniformity in statistics, so we 
begin to know what we have really got here.
  Second, the one thing we do know is intended pregnancies are the 
safest. If people are intending to get pregnant, they are watching 
their diet, they are probably trying, we hope, to stop smoking, 
drinking or whatever else they are doing and they are in much better 
shape and they are much healthier pregnancies. We all know how everyone 
in this country has been horrified by the percentage of unintended teen 
pregnancies. Eighty-two percent of the teen pregnancies between the 
ages of 15 and 19 are unintended. Very few people know that for women 
over 40, the statistics are almost the same. Unintended pregnancies of 
women over 40 are now at 77 percent. That is almost the same as teens. 
Further, we know from the meager statistics we do have, or the shaky 
ones we have, women over 40 who are pregnant are 9 times more likely to 
die in childbirth than women below that. So we have a tremendous 
education process to do, not only with teens but with women over 40, 
for heaven's sakes, who have not been getting this information.
  Another piece that I will be talking about in my bill is folic acid. 
As we all know, you can take that and it is in breads, it is in a lot 
of things now, and it will prevent many, many birth defects that we 
have been so troubled by in this country. Educating pregnant moms about 
that is terribly important for the future.
  Then another piece, which is awfully important, is having standards, 
standards that would certify facilities that provide fetal ultrasound. 
I know folks will scream about that. They screamed about that when we 
had legislation to put in standards for people who were doing 
mammograms, pap smears, and everything else. But let me say the only 
thing worse than not having those

[[Page H10765]]

types of tests is to have one and to have a bad one. What we have found 
is there are no standards on fetal ultrasound, and certainly I think 
that should be required. People should know as consumers what is a 
good, good effort in this field.
  The other very sad thing that our statistics show is there is a 
tremendous difference on the basis of race. African-American women have 
a much more difficult time and are much more apt to die from pregnancy 
than women of other races in this country. We think part of that is 
because of insurance coverage, and many other things. But those are all 
things that should be focused on.
  So I would hope that as we bring this century to a close, we once 
again focus on safe motherhood and doing everything this great Nation 
can do to try and reduce the number of fatalities that are much too 
high.

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