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What? Maternal deaths were a mainstay of life for most of human history. What are you talking about?
The comment above yours has actual numbers- .9% per birth in Napoleonic-era Scandinavia, highest in the world right now is (predictably)South Sudan, at 1.2% per birth. There's no doubt been times and places slightly higher, but even the really crappy parts of sub-saharan Africa don't break 2% per birth.
Natural fertility ranges from 4-10 children per woman, depending mostly on female age at marriage. That would mean childbirth is a common, possibly the most common, way of dying for women in historical societies, but pretty far from a majority. And that checks out with deep third world numbers- no African country has a double digit percentage of women dying in childbirth.
Maybe you're right, certainly right if you did a bit of googling here, this is a nit and a pick, my overall point was that life was much much worse for most of history. Do you disagree with that?
P.S.
I also said one in ten, perhaps I was thinking over overall odds which are exactly in line with your research
Yes, one in ten certainly seems like a reasonable approximation of total lifetime risk of premodern maternal mortality. And of course childbirth before the Victorian era was orders of magnitude more dangerous than it is today.
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