"The Safe Motherhood Quilt Project is a national effort developed to draw public attention to the current maternal death rates, as well as to the gross underreporting of maternal deaths in the United States, and to honor those women who have died of pregnancy-related causes since 1982.
The Quilt Project's sponsor is the Safe Motherhood Initiatives, USA, an organization founded to improve maternal mortality rates in the United States.
The quilt is made up of individually designed squares; each one devoted to a woman in the U.S. who has died of pregnancy-related causes since 1982. One quilt square is designed and dedicated to each mother's memory and may mention the date and place of death and the name of the woman. The Safe Motherhood Quilt is the voice for women who can no longer speak for themselves."
These quotes are taken directly from Ina May Gaskin's Safe Motherhood Quilt Project web site (7/12/08). Dr. Tuteur made several points about Ina May's efforts to publicize maternal mortality in the U.S. I think the above statements say quite a bit to refute Dr. Tuteur's assertions. Despite Dr. Tuteur's statement that Ina May is cynical about this issue, Ina May makes several very key points that desperately need to be addressed: we don't even know how many American women are dying in this country in the first year after giving birth, due to birth related causes. WE DON'T EVEN KNOW! No matter the "why", that is a huge problem. She also points out that African American women and other minority women die at a much greater rate. And finally, her quilt project is meant to publicize these women's deaths so we'll all CARE and hopefully look more closely into a system that doesn't even bother to count them. Her assertion that the midwifery model of care is much safer is only one idea here and it's hardly a cynical ploy to try and alert all of us that maternal mortality is a very big problem. I'm sure if Dr. Tuteur would like to join forces with Ina May and work on this problem, Ina May would welcome the effort. It's going to take some serious commitment on everyone's part to change our system of maternity care in positive ways and bring this rate down to something we can all feel proud of. Please look at the Safe Motherhood Initiatives web site so you can see all this organization is doing to improve the rate.
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"The Safe Motherhood Quilt Project is a national effort developed to draw public attention to the current maternal death rates, as well as to the gross underreporting of maternal deaths in the United States, and to honor those women who have died of pregnancy-related causes since 1982.
The Quilt Project's sponsor is the Safe Motherhood Initiatives, USA, an organization founded to improve maternal mortality rates in the United States.
The quilt is made up of individually designed squares; each one devoted to a woman in the U.S. who has died of pregnancy-related causes since 1982. One quilt square is designed and dedicated to each mother's memory and may mention the date and place of death and the name of the woman. The Safe Motherhood Quilt is the voice for women who can no longer speak for themselves."
These quotes are taken directly from Ina May Gaskin's Safe Motherhood Quilt Project web site (7/12/08). Dr. Tuteur made several points about Ina May's efforts to publicize maternal mortality in the U.S. I think the above statements say quite a bit to refute Dr. Tuteur's assertions. Despite Dr. Tuteur's statement that Ina May is cynical about this issue, Ina May makes several very key points that desperately need to be addressed: we don't even know how many American women are dying in this country in the first year after giving birth, due to birth related causes. WE DON'T EVEN KNOW! No matter the "why", that is a huge problem. She also points out that African American women and other minority women die at a much greater rate. And finally, her quilt project is meant to publicize these women's deaths so we'll all CARE and hopefully look more closely into a system that doesn't even bother to count them. Her assertion that the midwifery model of care is much safer is only one idea here and it's hardly a cynical ploy to try and alert all of us that maternal mortality is a very big problem. I'm sure if Dr. Tuteur would like to join forces with Ina May and work on this problem, Ina May would welcome the effort. It's going to take some serious commitment on everyone's part to change our system of maternity care in positive ways and bring this rate down to something we can all feel proud of. Please look at the Safe Motherhood Initiatives web site so you can see all this organization is doing to improve the rate.
Sasha
July 15, 2008 - 7:32pmThis Comment
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