The Topeka state journal., 1916-09-09
Other Death Causes Conquered,
Why Not Maternity?
WOman's Voice i'm Politics
Should Correct This.
$4,000 Die OF CHILDBIRTH
Is Preventable by Proper Care,
Argues Julia LathrOp.
No Decrease in Motherhood
Mortality i'm 13 Years.

Atlantic City. n. J., Aug. 9.-Miss
Julia Lathrop, chief of the National
Children's bureau. speaking on
Mothers in Politics. before the Ma
tional American Woman Suffrage as
sociation, pleaded for suffrage for wo-
men Ito protect maternity and in
fancy-a sheer question of national
policy"
She said:
Il am not to offer an address upon
suffrage in general nor upon the
rights of mothers which they may
claim on the general basis of citizen
ship, but only to speak of one parti-
cular aspect of the rights of mothers
which has been strangely overlooked
and to tell you why 1 believe that the
votes of woman would undoubtedly
be used to protect mothers.
Whatever primarily concerns mothers
must also concern everybody.
Women just s1Taken for Granted"
When men began to struggle for
the ideal of democracy it was such
hard work that they had no time or
strength of mind to think of women as
individually interested in the same
ideal. Women were taken for granted
as part of the equipment or impedi-
menta of mems lives and their special
interests, duties and hazards were re-
garded by men with indifference and
by women with fatalism.
This state of mind has uncon-
sciously persisted against all the
changes of civilization and now sud
denly and wonderfully we have be-
come conscious. 1t is like the break
ing-up of hard winter. Now we have
warm human so1icitude on the part of
men, a demand for education on the
part of women-an education which
is demanded not as an individual right
or privilege, but as a social duty.
'As the children's bureau has work
ed forward with it's series of infant
mortality studies. again and again the
indivisible connection between the
well-being of mother and child has
been shown in some new aspect.
Other Mortality Causes Decrease.
Most of US have a complacent feel
ing that the grave risks of maternity
are at an end, yet a study of NOR
tality rates for a period of from 1900
to 1913 reveals no decrease in the ma
ternal mortality. Why is this? Since
the discoveries of Pasteur and Lister
and DR. Q. w. Holmes, it has been
recognized that the cases of infection
are preventable by sheer scientific
cleanliness. All the other varying
causes of maternal mortality are not
so simply treated altho in steadily
growing measure it is found that they
can be made to yield to scientific skill.
"Other preventable causes of death
have yielded in this 13 year period to
the knowledge of our day; the typhoid
fever death rate, the diphtheria rate
have been cut in half, deaths from tu-
berculosis greatly lessened, yet no ap-
preciable diminution in maternal NOR
tality altho the method of preventing
infection and fever has been available
longer than the control of diphtheria
Last year it is estimated upon the GEN.
sus figures for the registration area
that Is, 900 women died from the va
rious complications of child bearing
and an American authority has SAID
lately that 10000 is nearer the true
figure.
Mothers Needed at Home.
"If nature relentlessly exacted this
cost of keeping the race alive, we
should not urge votes for women as
remedy; but she does not. Nature
wants mothers to live. to care for theil
children, to be happy with them, and
| to give happiness.
Women are told to stay at homt
| and care for the children. Let u:
make it posi- ibIe for them to do so. Dc
| the women who go daily to work in E
mill leaving abies at home to die a
a rate three fold greater than the ba
bies of richer mothers: do they leave
their homes out of sheer perverse jo,
| in the emancipated life of the fre,
woman? Let the infant mortality re
ports answer. Let us put ourselves
to the task of setting up a standard o
protection for the life of mother anc
| child, and then dedicate ourselves t
securing that protection for ever.
| mother.
/