In her later books, Anne made it clear there was a taboo against surgery (presumably because techniques are so primitive and anaesthetic non existent. Jaxom was only delivered by Caesarean because his mother was already dead.
I've read about Carrington Events before. Luckily, in 1859, there wasn't much to disrupt, but if the same thing happened today the results would be devastating.
The need to breed and keep population levels high is definitely an imperative on Pern, particularly as with the decline of modern medicine there would be higher child mortality, not to mention various plagues killing off adults. That was one of the main reasons girls were stopped from standing to Impress green dragons as going between often leads to miscarriages. Kitti Ping's original intention was for female dragons to bond with women, but when they were denied this, the green dragons began to Impress to boys, rather than die.