Implantes con superficie arenada y grabada activa

In order to explore how the government study constructed infant mortality as a class specific problem, it is crucial to take a closer look at the intersections of poverty, economics and health. Both the family histories and other data collected for the study focused on the laboring population, and in particular on topics such as housing and working conditions, family life and health. The selection of case studies speaks to this understanding of infant mortality as structured by class. While the case studies reprinted in the report represent only a fraction of the case studies the researchers worked with – and they stated that they had collected “hundreds of similar cases” – they nevertheless show certain similarities that match the presumption that within the report, infant mortality rates were closely related to class structures.534 In most cases those families had lost several children due to

causes such as gastrointestinal diseases, beriberi, tuberculosis, or other unknown causes. In contrast to the working-class population, people belonging to the higher strata of society had access to very different resources.535 The combination of social,

political and economic factors the physicians presented, which shaped the living and working conditions of the working-class population, painted a very specific picture of infant mortality in the Philippines. By improving those factors through the establishment of curative and preventive medical care, as well as through the

534 Bureau of Science Manila, 389.

535 For a closer examination of this dynamic, see the following chapter on obstetrics and

Producing Citizens: Infant Health Programs in the Philippines, 1900-1930

126 reform of infrastructure or housing options, the high infant mortality rate was to be significantly reduced.

The discussion of infanticide and abortion within the report facilitated the construction of infant mortality as being related to class and socio-economic factors rather than to environmental or “inherent” qualities of the Philippine population. The exclusion of infanticide and abortion as possible causes allowed the committee to present Filipinos as “home loving people” who did not neglect their offspring. Thereby, the major reasons for the high infant mortality rates had to lie outside the immediate family system and could be attributed to economic, political and social causes which could be subject to change.536 Even though this dissertation will not

discuss data on infanticide or abortion beyond the government study on infant mortality, the way those topics were treated within that study will serve as a way to analyze how the discussion of infanticide and abortion helped to support the committee’s arguments and recommendations.

As the committee stated, early pregnancy terminations and premature births were usually “due to toxemia, constitutional diseases, and above all to defective hygiene, excessive work, and accidents to which the Filipino woman is exposed during pregnancy.”537 During the last ten years, several hundred cases of infanticide

among 8,000,000 inhabitants had been recorded.538 “Of the 300 cases of

infanticide,” they explained, “very few are the ones in which the mothers have intentionally murdered their offsprings to hide their dishonor or in order not to

536 For work on infanticide in different Asian countries see Fabian Drixler, Mabiki:

Infanticide and Population Growth in Eastern Japan, 1660-1950 (Berkeley: University of

California Press, 2012); D. E. Mungello, Drowning Girls in China: Female Infanticide in

China since 1650 (Lanham, Maryland: Rowman & Littlefield Publishers, 2008); Malavika

Kasturi, “Taming the ‘Dangerous’ Rajput; Family, Marriage and Female Infanticide in Nineteenth-Century Colonial India,” in Colonialism as Civilizing Mission: Cultural

Ideology in British India, ed. Harald Fischer-Tiné and Michael Mann (London: Anthem

Press, 2004).

537 Bureau of Science Manila, Infant Mortality in the Philippine Islands, 210. 538 Bureau of Science Manila, 430.

Producing Citizens: Infant Health Programs in the Philippines, 1900-1930

127 suffer prejudices of maternity.”539 Most cases that made it into the official records

were due to accidents or “the imprudence of quack practitioners.”540 As a later

chapter will show, both Filipino and American physicians regarded the adverse influence of “quack practitioners” or indigenous midwives on infant mortality rates to be very high.

Considering the influence of accidents and the practices of indigenous medical practitioners to be crucial factors, the researchers concluded that “artificial or criminal abortion or infanticide”, were practically unknown “among the poorer class of Filipinos.”541 They further stated that if “out of wedlock” a Filipino woman

of the lower classes got pregnant, she usually did not interfere and let “the event follow its course” to give “her child the best of care she knows how to give.”542

“However poor, ignorant, and immoral she may be,” the researchers explained, “the Filipino mother, save in rare exceptions, does not murder or abandon the fruit of her affections. She cares for the child in the same manner as any other mother takes care of her legitimate child; if not with more caresses, yet with greater love, because it is unfortunate and is without a father to support it.”543 Only in very rare cases, the

researchers found evidence for voluntary abortions, since as they explained, “the common mass is entirely ignorant” of “physical methods.” Similarly, methods “for the prevention of conception are entirely unknown among the poor people, but among the well-to-do classes they are being practiced with increasing frequency.”544

The reasons for this absence of abortion and infanticide among Filipinos the researchers found in Catholic beliefs and the orientation towards family life. The committee stated that “sociologically, the home life of the Filipinos is

539 Bureau of Science Manila, 430. 540 Bureau of Science Manila, 430. 541 Bureau of Science Manila, 210. 542 Bureau of Science Manila, 210. 543 Bureau of Science Manila, 430. 544 Bureau of Science Manila, 210.

Producing Citizens: Infant Health Programs in the Philippines, 1900-1930

128 remarkably constant and is characterized by a degree of thoughtfulness, care, and consideration for others not excelled by the families of any other country. Infants and children, in particular, receive the best care and consideration which the parents know how and can afford to give.”545 “Undoubtedly,” they reasoned, “the most

constant and efficient influence for good is that found in the Roman Catholic religion which is practically universal among the Christian Filipinos.”546

Consequently, infant mortality rates had to be shaped by factors other than family life and religious principles played a major role in this context. As these passages show, the focus of the study was predominantly on Christian Filipinos. The population was imagined as Catholic and thus adhering to respective values, as well as home-loving and focused on the family. Ideals of motherhood were similarly constructed as loving and concentrated on the domestic.

Infant Mortality as “Class Mortality”: Socio-Economic Conditions and