Presumably every species wants the healthiest mothers and offspring possible, within the resource limits of its particular environment. Allowing maternal mortality to go up? In evolution, that makes no sense at all. If the mother dies because of some local antiabortion policy, that means she never gets to have more children. If she dies because she didn’t have access to good health care and family planning, she doesn’t get to have more children. This is the opposite of optimizing for the greatest number of healthy babies. It’s the biological equivalent of cutting off your nose to spite your
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