Birth Control Could Reduce Global Maternal Deaths 70%

Beyond the Veil| Canadian Prime Minister Stephen Harper has ‘remamined non-committal’ about whether contraception should be incorporated into the new mother-and-child health initiative and policy initiative being drafted for a meeting of G8 leaders this summer in Canada.

The Guttmacher Institute, which focuses on reproductive health in every aspect of a woman’s life including access to safe, legal abortions, says that providing women modern birth control would reduce maternal deaths by 70 percent.via AP

Besides a two-thirds drop in unintended pregnancies worldwide, and a 75 percent drop in unsafe abortions, the report estimates that $5.1 billion could be saved annually, if governments embraced birth control as part of a woman’s total health package in developing countries.

Perhaps putting a cash value on women’s lives is a step in the right direction.

In Canada, like the US, conservatives and liberals can’t agree on a definition of women’s reproductive health. Woman exists as a human being but also the vessel, the incubator or a ‘womb for occupants’, as US Rep Stupack called her in the house health care debate.

Globally, most conservatives and religions are more focused on the possibility of life, than the living breathing woman who already exists. Defining her health care rights is less important than those of her future progency.

Simply stated, everywhere women are less valuable than their future children and so they die as a result of patriarchal priorities. Anne