State of the World’s Mothers Report 2010

Happy Mother’s Day! I love you, Mom.

According to the 11th Annual Mother’s Index you’re better off being a mother in the following countries: Norway, Australia, Iceland, Sweden, Denmark, New Zealand, Finland, the Netherlands, Belgium and Germany. Those are the top ten developed nations, listed in order, for best quality maternal and infant healthcare. Forty-three developed nations and 117 developing nations were included in the index (see Save the Children).

Where does our nation land in the index? Well, not only did we not medal, we’ve gone down from 27th place to 28th since last year’s analysis. The United States has one of the highest maternal mortality rates of the developed nations, 1 in 4,800.

Why aren’t we improving?

I found these numbers from The New England Journal of Medicine* very insightful (Ha! I first typed “the new england jourbal of medicine”) , “In most European countries where midwifery practice still dominates maternity care, the involvement of midwives is associated with good perinatal health outcomes. For example, midwives in Ireland, Scotland, and England deliver more than 65 percent of all babies, and the proportions in Denmark, Sweden, Norway, Finland, and Germany exceed 85 percent.” The most recent study I could find (2003) said that about 10-15 percent of births in the United States are attended by a certified nurse-midwife. I wonder if that’s something significant to consider. Or are over 1 in 3 births in our country really high risk emergencies, requiring cesarean deliveries? Or have many of these emergencies been caused by hospital interventions? Good questions for Mothers Day.

Now, off to the kiddy pool out back with my sweet family!

*M.T. Lydon-Rochelle, “Minimal Intervention – Nurse-Midwives in the United States,” NEJM 351:19 (November 2004).

Injury Got Up As Gift

“This summer, President Obama proclaimed again that we ‘need fathers to recognize that responsibility doesn’t end at conception.’ In a sense, of course, he is absolutely right. But the problem is that, in another sense, he is completely wrong: Male responsibility really does end at conception. Men these days can choose only sex, not fatherhood; mothers alone determine whether children shall be allowed to exist. Legalized abortion was supposed to grant enormous freedom to women, but…”

Above is the first paragraph of a very insightful article, Her Choice, Her Problem, in the August/September 2009 issue of First Things. I meant to share it long before now. (Below is Andy, waving hello, I suppose,  in his 20th week ultra-sound.)

The author, Richard Stith of Valparaiso, repeatedly proves that women are all alone in their Choice, and that this is very sad. In the fight for female “reproductive rights,” we achieved the “feminization of poverty.”

(I disagreed only with his characterization of birth control. Stith thinks that contraception did not fundamentally change the consequences of natural sexual relations. He says abortion did that, pointing out that all forms of contraception are fallible except abortion. I think, rather, that birth control [long, loud gulp] did fundamentally change the consequences of natural sexual relations. According to birth control activists, divorce, out-of-wedlock pregnancies, abortion, and venereal disease (to name a few of the consequences) were supposed to magically disappear or at least significantly decrease in number with the legalization of commercial contraception. But what happened instead, in the last forty years?

One more point about the “fallibility” of contraception and abortion: Contraception is indeed fallible, but the word is a bit misleading. The Pill is effective 99.9% of the time. Also, enough babies have survived abortions (about 50 a year) that Congress has voted in a “Born Alive” bill for or against their protection.)

Abortion in the “Year of the Family”

(from rachelsvineyard.org, Vine & Branches. January 2009)

The Key to Increasing the Russian Birth Rate?
Healing the Traumatic Aftershock of Abortion.

By Kevin & Theresa Burke

The Russian government declared 2008 to be the “Year of the Family” to fight the decline in population resulting from the highest abortion rate in the world with nearly 70 percent of pregnancies ending in an abortion. Authorities in the southern Russian City of Novorissiysk scheduled a “week without abortion” in an effort to combat the country’s high abortion rate.

Government policies to encourage child bearing have had little effect to reduce the high number of abortions. Despite all the pregnancy perks and childbearing incentives now being offered, women in Russia are not biting the bait to breed.

Dr Theresa Burke the founder of Rachel’s Vineyard Ministries explores the dynamics of “Traumatic Reenactment,” the repetition of traumatic themes, feelings and actions as a hallmark indicator of trauma in her book Forbidden Grief, the Unspoken Pain of Abortion.

Dr Burke explains:

In order to understand the Russian population problem, it is essential to understand the psychological dynamic of traumatic repetition. This is directly connected to the phenomenon of multiple abortions.

In the United States nearly half of all abortions are repeat procedures…in Russia the conservative estimate is that Russian women average between 3-8 abortions. While it is true that many Russians view abortion as a form of birth control, there is a deeper dynamic at work here.

During trauma the feelings and knowledge of what is happening are so unacceptable that the mind refuses to acknowledge them. The trauma becomes fixed at a certain moment in a person’s life – dissociated from consciousness – and provides the material for subsequent post-traumatic reenactment.

Without healing and grief work following the initial abortion loss and the degrading and painful procedure, women are susceptible to cope with their painful feelings through the use of drugs, eating disorders, alcohol, drug abuse and promiscuity. These behaviors frequently lead to another crisis pregnancy, and abortion is once again seen as the best solution. Repetition is the greatest indicator of trauma.

With each abortion the individual becomes increasingly numb, more detached from their hearts, more disconnected from hopes and dreams for the future and susceptible to patterns of relational abandonment, ambivalence over motherhood, depression and anxiety. With each abortion there can be a distorted sense of mastery over the traumatic feelings…they may not be aware of feelings of loss or grief and not even be aware of a deeply entrenched self-destructive pattern of aborting new opportunities for love and life.

In many ways, women really do experience their pregnancies and their unborn children as part of themselves. When the woman destroys her pregnancy and developing child, she is also destroying an extension of herself.

If those in power want to lower the abortion rate and allow Mother Russia to recover from the ravages of abortion’s toll, there is a need to drastically increase the number of healing programs like Rachel’s Vineyard so that women and men can begin to heal from this complicated grief caused by the loss of so many children. Incentives won’t make women want to reproduce. Only healing can do that – and bring resolution to the trauma.

A Good Mother

“We cannot fight credibly against other social and moral evils, including poverty and violence, while we tolerate mass killings by abortion.”
- Mother Teresa of Calcutta