News - COMMENTARY: Flowers for Mother’s Day

COMMENTARY: Flowers for Mother’s Day

Commentary by CEDPA President Yolonda C. Richardson

May 11, 2007—This Mother’s Day, don’t forget the flowers.

I’m not talking about a whole bouquet, though our moms and aunts and grandmothers certainly deserve that and so much more to celebrate their many contributions to our lives. Instead, I’m referring to the earliest U.S. tradition of wearing carnations on Mother’s Day—red or pink if your mother was alive, and white if your mother had died.

Mother’s Day is a celebration of our mothers. But I hope that this year we can also honor motherhood, and recommit to making it safer for women worldwide.

If we were to wear white carnations in remembrance of the so many women who have died in pregnancy and childbirth over the past year, we would have to pick a field of more than 500,000 carnations.

Safe motherhood is an achievable goal.

It is a sad fact that we are now used to these numbers. Despite the fact that many of these lives can be saved with cost-effective, proven interventions, the number of maternal deaths has remained unchanged for years. Complications of pregnancy and childbirth are still the leading cause of death and disability for women in developing countries aged 15 to 49. Most of these maternal deaths occur in sub-Saharan Africa and south Asia.

But each individual woman and her family deserves so much more from us.

There are just over half a million people living in Washington, D.C., where CEDPA has its headquarters. That’s about one white carnation for every man, woman and child in our city. What if each of us wore a white carnation and walked together to the U.S. Congress to ask for a renewed commitment to making motherhood safer?

What if all of us in cities worldwide did the same?

We know what to ask for. Nations need to improve access to:

Skilled assistance during childbirth and care for obstetric complications, including life-threatening emergencies;
Community education to raise support for skilled maternal care and awareness of safe motherhood;
Postpartum care to improve both maternal and child health outcomes; and
Family planning and reproductive health information and services for families, allowing women to have children when they are healthy.

Mother's everywhere have a right to maternal and prenatal health care.

For 30 years, CEDPA has helped raise awareness about maternal health risks and mobilize actions to make pregnancy and childbirth safer for all women. In 1999, CEDPA helped found White Ribbon Alliance for Safe Motherhood in India, which has reached hundreds of millions throughout India with messages on preventing maternal deaths through its grassroots and advocacy campaigns. We also work in countries including Nigeria and Nepal to increase access to reproductive health care and skilled birth attendants.

How can we scale up, so that programs like these can reach all those in need? We need increased political will and resources that match the need. This will only happen when all of us around the world demand that more action be taken. Surely our mothers and daughters deserve nothing less.

I will be wearing my white carnation on Sunday. Will you join me?

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