Nicholas Kristof recently wrote an op-ed in the New York Times about the more than half a million women who die each year in pregnancy and childbirth worldwide. From ‘They Think They’ve Been Cursed By God’:
President Bush’s budget request this month proposes that the U.S. cut spending on global maternal and child health programs to $346 million, or just $1.15 per person in the U.S.
To understand what the cuts mean, meet Simeesh Segaye.
Ms. Simeesh, a warm 21-year-old Ethiopian peasant with a radiant smile, married at 19 and quickly became pregnant. After she had endured two days of obstructed labor, her neighbors carried her to a road and packed her into a bus, but it took another two days to get to the nearest hospital.
By then the baby was dead. And Ms. Simeesh awakened to another horror: She began leaking urine and feces from her vagina, a result of a childbirth injury called obstetric fistula….
Those responding to the column in today’s New York Times include Sandra Krause, Director of the Reproductive Health Project, Women’s Commission for Refugee Women and Children; Congresswoman Carolyn B. Maloney (14th District, New York); Laura Katzive, Deputy Director of the International Legal Program of the Center for Reproductive Rights; and Elizabeth Mach, R.N., Bugando Medical Center, Mwanza, Tanzania.