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The trend of the figures for the past few years would
suggest that we are succeeding in reducing the catastrophic
risk of childbearing. One may well question why should any
woman die through childbirth, and it is difficult to select a
cause which is inevitably accompanied by such a tragic outcome,
and the most obvious reply would be in such circumstances
that such a woman should never have been submitted
to the risk. Human beings do not, however, show biologically
such consistency as is exhibited by scientific phenomena, and
while there is no such thing as inevitability, there will always
be those who will elect to take the highest risks, nor is it
likly that any arrangements devised by humans will ever be
entirely free from occasional error. It is, therefore, reasonably
certain that a basic maternal mortality will always remain as
long as human reproduction remains a natural process. What
we can do, however, is by no means unimportant. We can
strive to exclude and maintain the exclusion of such causes as
can be described as accidental, and what is probably of at least
equal importance, we can strive to reduce the maternal
morbidity; the toll of permament disability suffered by untold
numbers of our mothers.