May Women with Weak Hearts Bear Children?!

Out of every ten women afflicted in their hearts, eight are able to bear children — despite the belief prevailing among people in general, and among some physicians in particular, that it is impossible for a woman afflicted in her heart to become a mother. For experience has proven that, with effective treatment and protective medical care, eighty percent of those who suffer the pains of heart disease can bear children without its affecting their health and without their being exposed to dangers... For if this disease does not stand in the way of a woman's carrying out her natural tasks and her daily activity, then it will most certainly not stand in the way of her pregnancy and her attending to the raising of her children...

Ninety percent of the heart ailments that trouble women during pregnancy are rheumatism, or rheumatic fever, which strikes the girl in childhood, eats into the tissues of the heart, and produces a disturbance in its beats; and when this fever passes, it leaves behind it a chronic disease of the heart, the seriousness of which depends on the extent of the notches and wounds in the heart's tissues. And since pregnancy and childbearing add to the heart's load, it is for the physician to decide, matters being so, whether this heart can bear the burden added upon it. And although heart disease shortens the life of the woman who has passed the stage of maturity, deaths fall off rapidly as she approaches the middle years of her life or reaches later age... The physicians believe, moreover, that the attacks of rheumatic fever can be lessened by taking effective medical means such as penicillin and the sulfa drugs.

Some physicians have told me of ailing mothers who bore twelve to fourteen children without being exposed to any exhaustion or danger... Medical progress in examining the patient and diagnosing her disease is among the chief causes that have led to this satisfactory result. Until a time not long past, physicians believed that if an ailing pregnant woman felt a slight disturbance in her heart — as when a faint sound was heard coming from its direction — then she was most certainly, matters being so, in a dangerous state not to be envied. Now, however, these physicians have discovered that this beat coming from the direction of the pregnant woman's heart constitutes no danger whatever, and that it passes with the passing of the pregnancy. And high blood pressure is often attributed to psychological factors... One famous physician affirms, after several researches he has undertaken and several experiments he has made upon his patients, that if a woman strongly desires pregnancy and yearns to become a mother, then bearing children rids her of much of the illness she suffers, even if it be pressure of the blood or weakness of the heart. This physician supports these conclusions of his with cases of illness he was treating. There was a young woman of twenty-eight, complaining of a pressure of the blood that had brought her to the worst of consequences: she was incapable of doing any work, whether inside the house or outside it, so much so that she came to take her meals at her mother's, to spare herself the trouble of preparing them. It happened that she became pregnant, and she began to grumble and complain of a tightness in her spirit, until she would faint the moment her eyes fell upon a pregnant woman. At last she consulted the psychological physician, who set about removing her fears from her and softening the sharpness of her forebodings

and delusions, until she was completely cured; and it came about that she bore a child sound of body and lively, and she became able to pull his carriage for him and to do all her housework without help...

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The general statistics indicate that three and a half percent of pregnant women afflicted with heart disease meet their death; yet in the sanatoriums and clinics where they stay, this percentage falls to one in a hundred. Those for whom pregnancy is impossible are usually afflicted with high blood pressure, then with a history filled with heart attacks — this besides their incapacity to carry on their ordinary tasks — then with rheumatic fever or with syphilis. In such a case the physician advises the pregnant woman to undergo an operation of abortion, by which she is delivered of the pregnancy within the first three months; and this operation is performed, of course, after the consent of husband and wife.

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Care of the pregnant woman afflicted with heart disease is very necessary — so much so that a special science of it has lately arisen, alongside the lessons and the scientific and medical researches given in the universities and colleges; and then there are in America special institutions founded for this purpose.

The sum of the matter is that deciding the fate of the pregnant woman, and her fitness or unfitness for work, depends first upon her, then upon her husband and her own physician, and finally upon all the members of her family. The pregnant woman must set before her eyes that it is incumbent upon her to make no exertion whatever for two months after her delivery, so that she may devote all her care to the newborn child. And then she stands in pressing need of patience, of help, and of peace of mind...