The Indianapolis times. [volume] (Indianapolis [Ind.]) 1922-1965, 1933-06-24
Woman Crusades Against High
Death Rate in Maternity Cases
Writer Fights Conspiracy
of Silence Seeks to
Abate Suffering.
BY MARGUERITE YOUNG
Times Special Writer

NEW YORK, June 24.-Helena
Huntington Smith. writer, asserted
today that an official government
report. scheduled for publication
soon. will show that federal investi-
gators actually counted $500 ma
ternity deaths in fifteen states dur
ing two years.
It is estimated that 5000 Ameri-
can women die in childbirth every
year and that the rate OF mortality
stands precisely where it stood
twenty years ago.
In addition to these known facts,
Miss Smith said, the report will dis
close that a high percentage of the
deaths results from womens volun-
tary efforts to thwart the natural
process of reproduction after it has
begun.
The report is that of a survey by
the children's bureau of the United
States department Of Labor.
Higher Standards Urged
The bureau will make two rec
concentrations:
l. That doctors be required to
have much better training in OBJ
stetrics than they now are receiving.
2. That hospitals, particularly the
smaller and less we'll endowed, be
held to standards proposed by the
American College of Surgeons.
Miss Smith contends that the art
and agony of human reproduction
are enmeshed in a conspiracy of
silence.
There's hush-hush attitude to-
ward the whole business" she con-
tinued. There's a tendency to
cover up the pain with euphemistic
oh, how thrillings'- tie it up in
blue ribbons. Civilization produced
the conspiracy of silence. 1t ought
to do more-much, much more than
it does-to alleviate the suffering
and death"
Novel Stirs Controversy
Months ago Miss Smith wrote a
novel, Damned If They Do" 1t was
clinical 1t told the story Of
woman whose individuality was
thwarted by ild-bearing. It raised
a storm of controversy.
Il get letters from readers every
where" she said, looking much
happier than her own heroine was
over motherhood Most of them,
it's true, agree with me. But others
show that the very idea that some
thing should be done to eliminate
pain is thoroughly shocking.
There seems to be a supersti-
tious, perhaps often religious, belief
that there's virtue in suffering"
Miss Smith contends that anes-
thetics and medical skill can pre-
vent outrageous pain
1t was something a doctor said
while Miss Smith was having her
first baby that inspired her novel.
He looked at me with obviously
summoned tolerance" she related,
and he said Eve really shouldn't
have eaten that apple, should she?'
l think it was then I decided to
write the novel. I know the sem
tence ranked until it was pub
liShed."
Highest Rate in Cities
When her baby was years old
she began to gather material scien-
tif1cally 1t took two years to write
the book-and by that time she was
preparing for her second baby.
She is the wife of Henry F.
Pringle, biographer and editor. She
obtained her information on the
children's bureau report in Wash
ington
1T was on the basis of this study"
she said, that Secretary Of Labor
Frances Perkins recently reported
that 81 per cent of our maternity
deaths are preVentable.
The striking fact is that the
highest death rate is not in rural
districts, where women have babies
at home under primitive conditions,
but in cities of from $4,000 to $4,000,
where, undoubtedly, maternity work
is conducted without sufficient re-