557. Science: The Harm Of Procreation To Women

557.   Science:  The Harm Of Procreation To Women

In entries 552 and 554 I suggested, that the evolution of the gullibility to religious beliefs was facilitated by its effects of reducing the inhibition to harm and the resignation to being harmed by externalizing the responsibility to a deity.   This enabled the survival of the species in spite of the harm by pregnancy and childbirth to women, who under an undamaged cognitive guidance would refuse to have children. 

One possible argument against my suggestion is the denial of the harm.   Too often maternity is believed to be the only purpose of women's existence, and a few cases of death at childbirth are usually discounted as insignificant.

But once again, science comes up with evidence:   

http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2012/08/120808121949.htm

"A Tel Aviv University researcher has found that approximately one third of all post-partum women exhibit some symptoms of PTSD, and a smaller percentage develop full-blown PTSD following the ordeal of labor."

"Of those women who developed post-traumatic symptoms, 80 percent opted for natural childbirth without pain relief. "

At the period in prehistory, when the gullibility to accept being harmed as a deity's will co-evolved with the cognitive ability to refuse being harmed, there was no modern pain relief as an alternative to natural childbirth.   After the first traumatic experience, if a woman were allowed the choice to avoid suffering a repetition, it was only by rejecting procreation.    Instead they were given the delusional option of earning the reward in the afterlife.    It gave them a pseudo-sense to the otherwise senseless horror of procreation.