"of the 136 million women who gave birth last year, nearly half, according to a 2008 World Health Organisation report, had no medical help during or after birth, potentially putting their lives at risk.
I am a midwife and I believe the high global maternal mortality rate is a point worth labouring. With access to good medical care, women can expect a safe pregnancy and birth — a fact worth celebrating tomorrow on International Women's Day.
Yet many women have little to celebrate — 99 per cent of maternal deaths occur in the developing world. The fact these deaths are not happening in our own backyard does not absolve us of international responsibility to reduce this figure. Indeed, it should inspire the opposite reaction.
Forget our battle for paid maternity leave, women in place like Somalia, are dying before they can even nurse thier new child. As Bronwyn says "These women are not dying of a disease but from something nor
mal called pregnancy."And its not just African countries with such appalling levels of maternal deaths, according to UNICEF's State of the World's Children report women in our close neighbor, East Timor, are nearly 400 times more likely to die during pregnancy or childbirth than mothers in Australia.
In addition to this the Solomon Islands, Papua New Guinea, Laos and Cambodia have among the highest levels of children who fail to survive to their fifth birthday.
PNG is a particular concern with the number of women surviving pregnancy actually reversing since 2000.
In light of these awful statistics I was estatic to hear that Australia's foreign minister, Stephen Smith announced changes to the family planning guidelines for Australia’s overseas development assistance programs. The major shift, of course, was allowing any overseas development funds being used to aid abortion.
Its is not just abortion funding that has been affected but a whole range of family planning services according to some of the development agencies that work in the region, like Jane Singleton, CEO of Australian Reproductive Health Alliance who told ABC about the impact of this decision:
It will have huge impacts on hundreds of thousands of women and their families who want to make choices about the numbers of children they have and the spacing and it will also free up funds for family planning generally. Because whilst these guidelines have been in place, Australian government funding for family planning generally the whole range of family planning diminshed by 84 per cent.
What ever your religious beliefs on pregnancy termination, we must take action for all the women in developing countries who don't have the right to safe childbirth.Hurrah to Stephen Smith for this decision if it means hundreds perhaps thousands of families don't lose thier Mum to childbirth.
