On March 4, Amnesty International issued an alert to prevent world wide deaths due to pregnancy. The human rights organization said that across the globe, women are dying of these deaths at the rate of one per minute.
Amnesty is urging people to meet with their Senators and Representatives in their local districts to try to stop these deaths.
The Amnesty alert went on to say that it is, “appalling how many women are dying in the United States from complications due to pregnancy and childbirth.” According to Amnesty about half of these deaths can be prevented. Many of these deaths are because women do not have access to good health care or maternal care. About 13 million women between the ages of 15 and 44 have no insurance at all. Several of these women start their pregnancy with untreated conditions that only get worse with pregnancy. African-American women are almost four times more likely to die of pregnancy complications than white women. (I have written about this in other articles for this website.) If the pregnancies are high-risk, African-American are five and a half times more likely to die than white women.
Amnesty is sending out the message that all pregnant women should get the care that they deserve, and that Senators and Representatives have to “get with the program.” The organization has designated the dates of March 29-April 9, as the time for people to take this message to their elected officials.
From my personal experience with Amnesty, I can testify to the fact that when they organize a campaign, it is because the issue is very serious. Amnesty does exhaustive research before it conducts a human rights campaign. This particular alert about the very high number of deaths due to pregnancy is an issue of women’s rights, and women’s rights are human rights. All pregnant women, regardless of color or economic status, are entitled to receive the best possible care. They are giving birth for heavens sake. The fact that so many are dying in the U.S. and all over the world, is nothing short of disgraceful.
If we had more women in Congress, then perhaps the Senators and Representatives would take more notice. Until that day, please join in the fight to prevent pregnancy-related deaths.
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