Religion: It Makes You Insane

Pic from this fine site

And dead, too.

A 22-year-old mother died just hours after giving birth to twins because doctors were forbidden from giving her a blood transfusion as a Jehovah's Witness.

What was this woman thinking? "Why don't I just die for my deity and leave my kids without a mother?" I can't fathom this. You can be as religious as you want, but your religion should not relieve you of your responsibilities. When you decide to have a child, you are responsible for that child from before it's born to the day it leaves your home as a legal adult. And sometimes even beyond that. Think disabled children.

So when this silly twit got preggers, she needed to make a decision right then and there. If anything happened to her, it was her responsibility to ensure that she dealt with it in a way that would best benefit her children.

What does she do? Decides having a blood transfusion is against her religious beliefs, and she'd rather die than disobey the orders of the Big Guy In The Sky, leaving her children to struggle on without her.

Numerous studies have shown that motherless children have significantly higher mortality rates.

motherless children had a markedly higher mortality than that of controls in both urban (mortality rate ratio (MR) 2.32 (95% confidence interval 1.11-4.84)) and rural areas (MR = 4.16 (2.79-6.22)). Virtually all the excess mortality occurred among children under 2 y of age when their mother died. Few motherless children had been provided with surrogate breastfeeding.

Some of the studies cited are based on poor rural areas and some on developed urban areas. Rates of child mortality appear to be significantly higher regardless of the level of development of the subjects studied. Notably, motherless girls had higher mortality rates, possibly due to their role as substitute caretakers after the death of the mother.

... older girls suffered a three-fold higher susceptibility to mother's death than their male counterparts. This suggests that grown-up girls assuming the responsibilities of the missing mother had a lower chance of survival.

The height of hypocrisy is expressed in the comments by the best man at the couple's wedding, a fellow JW:

"We can't believe she died in childbirth in this day and age, with all the technology there is. What makes it even more sad is Emma had time to hold and start to bond with her twins before complications set in."

He added: "Anthony is in pieces."

Yeah, well, you didn't want her to use an available technology that would have saved her life. So Anthony (the husband) is upset. Well, wotsherface (the wife) is dead. Which is worse.

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