Ohio Republican, Skeptical of the U.S. Maternal Mortality Rate, Blames It on ‘Obesity’

Well, here’s someone whom I wish would shut up about reproductive health: Ohio state Rep. Bill Dean (R), who is doubling down on his recent comments calling skyrocketing U.S. maternal mortality rates a “myth” by blaming high maternal mortality on… “obese people.”

“I’m not a physician. But I would imagine, a lot of times, it’s the lifestyle of the lady that’s having the pregnancy,” he told the Dayton Daily News. “We also have the most obese people in the whole world. It’s just individual cases.”

Dean first told the outlet earlier in October that “there’s no great risk of dying from pregnancy,” and, further, that ectopic pregnancy—which occurs when the fertilized egg implants outside the uterus—“doesn’t count.” Ectopic pregnancies account for about 2% of pregnancies, and are the leading cause of maternal mortality during the first trimester—but sure, buddy!

Contrary to Dean’s claims about the supposed safety of pregnancy, the U.S. has the highest maternal mortality rate among wealthy nations, per statistics provided by the CDC. This ranking is rendered even more shameful by additional CDC research that found more than 80% of pregnancy-related deaths in the U.S. are preventable, ultimately stemming from high costs and limited access to the full range of health care—particularly along lines of race and class. Black pregnant people are three to four times more likely to die of pregnancy-related causes than their white counterparts, and a 2017 study found the maternal mortality rate is disproportionately higher in states where abortion access is more restricted, which surely bodes well for post-Roe times.

As if it weren’t already pretty clear what kind of person Dean is, when asked about supporting rape exceptions to abortion—which, in some cases, might have prevented child rape victims in Ohio from being forced to cross state lines for care—Dean responded, “Why would you punish the child for rape?” Dean was, to be very clear, referring to fertilized eggs, over living, adolescent rape victims. He’s also referred to abortion patients as “heathens.”

When Dayton Daily News asked Dean again about his stances last Thursday, unsettlingly enough, he had more to say. “Pregnancy is a natural thing that women are made for. That’s the way God made them,” Dean elaborated. “The myth is that it is dangerous; it’s no more dangerous than living every day.”

Incidentally, given Dean’s shocking “not a physician” status, his Democratic challenger, Jim Duffee, is a retired pediatrician, who has thoughts on Dean’s stunning ignorance. “Although most pregnancies are joyous occasions, pregnancy is a dangerous time for women,” Duffee told the newspaper. He further pointed out that, as all research has indicated, “maternal mortality will increase with the abortion ban.” Duffee continued, “If a healthy young woman comes in, her fetus is at 18 weeks, and her water breaks, that fetus is unsalvageable. It will not survive. Currently, the only way to save her life is to wait until she’s deathly ill.”

To Duffee’s point, maternal mortality will almost certainly rise as more and more doctors fearing prison-time for violating abortion bans deny patients emergency abortion care. We’re already seeing these cases across the country, between child rape victims, whose pregnancies are innately high-risk, and pregnant cancer patients who are denied chemotherapy until they end their pregnancy. In a handful of other documented cases, a Tennessee woman with emergency pregnancy complications was forced to take a six-hour ambulance to the closest state that didn’t ban abortion. A Missouri woman with a high-risk, nonviable pregnancy whose water broke at 17 weeks was referred to an anti-abortion crisis pregnancy center by her state senator’s office. A Louisiana woman whose fetus had no skull was denied abortion, anyway, and said she was “carrying [her fetus] just to bury it.”

Beyond the dehumanizing cruelty of these medical situations, there’s life-threatening risk, too: Earlier this year, a Polish woman died from being forced to carry a dead fetus and contracting sepsis. While her country’s abortion ban allows ambiguous exceptions for threats to the life of the pregnant person, doctors fearing prison sentences are still often too afraid to offer life-saving care. This sounds chillingly familiar—and entirely unrelated to “obesity” rates, to be clear.