Maternal mortality in California

During the period August 1957 to December 1966, the Committee on Maternal and Child Care of the California Medical Association and the State Department of Public Health studied 1,219 deaths of women who died during or within 90 days of termination of pregnancy. Twenty-two percent of the deaths reviewed were considered unavoidable. Seventy percent had one or more avoidable factors; of these, 46 percent were attributed to errors in professional judgment, and 16 percent to inadequate prenatal care by the patient herself. Nearly one-third (383) of the 1,219 cases reviewed were deaths from non-obstetric causes. Of the 836 deaths from obstetric causes, 260 were attributed to abortion. Preliminary figures suggest a reduction in criminal abortion deaths corresponding to the increase in therapeutic abortions since 1968. Over one-third of the deaths occurred in Mexican and Negro mothers. Death rate for Negro was triple that for white mothers. Despite the presence of four medical schools in District II (Los Angeles County), maternal death rates were 30 to 50 percent higher than in other districts due to the large urban black and Chicano population. One rural district with a large migratory agricultural population also had high rates.