Rex Kerr
1 min readNov 28, 2022

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This is the conclusion of the first paper that I linked in my first reply to you.

Pregnancy is very hard on a woman's body--I don't deny that at all. And although we have reduced maternal mortality to close to zero, I am not sure that we've substantially reduced maternal injury--indeed, we may have even increased it both indirectly (less fit population) and directly (do you really need to be starved, woken up every hour by a nurse checking your blood pressure, induced if you're not progressing as fast as the hospital would like, etc. etc.).

However, even given all that, and the years of obligation, short sleep, stress, and so on, afterwards, the overall impact appears to lengthen life not shorten it. Weird! But biology is weird, which is why it's a good idea to step back and take in the whole lifelong picture, if anyone's thought to collect it. In this case, people have.

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Rex Kerr
Rex Kerr

Written by Rex Kerr

One who rejoices when everything is made as simple as possible, but no simpler. Sayer of things that may be wrong, but not so bad that they're not even wrong.

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