COMMENTARY: Happy Mother’s Day 2015

A Commentary by CEDPA President Carol Peasley

May 8, 2009—They live in the desert region of Rajasthan, India. In the busy urban township of Seshego, South Africa. In big cities and small villages in Egypt, Nepal, Nigeria, Swaziland and elsewhere.

There are hundreds of thousands of girls and young women in every corner of the world who are now better prepared to navigate their reproductive health and future relationships because of CEDPA’s Better Life Options programs.

They are the ones who give me hope this Mother’s Day.

Many of our Better Life Options graduates live in areas where pregnancy brings mixed emotions. They may live in communities where child marriage and early childbearing is common, and where there are enormous health risks associated with childbirth.

This year, we know that over 500,000 women will likely die in pregnancy and childbirth, a number that has been unchanged for years. Girls aged 15-20 are twice as likely to die in childbirth as those in their twenties, and girls under the age of 15 are five times as likely to die in childbirth. These women will leave more than 1 million children behind without a mother. Their lives are then put at even greater risk.

The tragedy is that we have known for years how to make motherhood safer. UNFPA (the United Nations Population Fund) summarizes three key areas for action:

• Give women and men access to reproductive health information and services to avoid unintended pregnancies;



• Ensure that all pregnant women have access to skilled care at birth; and



• Ensure that all women with complications in pregnancy have timely access to quality emergency obstetric care.

Research shows that meeting unmet needs for contraception alone could reduce up to a third of maternal deaths globally.

We also know that meeting the education and reproductive health needs of adolescents—especially girls—is an important intervention to reduce maternal mortality. For each additional year of education a girl receives, she is much more likely to delay marriage and childbearing, use reliable family planning methods, have fewer and healthier babies than her peers, and more likely to seek pre- and post-natal care.

Girls who graduate from CEDPA’s Better Life Options programs receive education about their reproductive health, including on maternal health and how to prevent HIV. They also learn about setting goals, navigating interpersonal relationships, improving communication skills and understanding their legal rights.

Program evaluations have shown that Better Life Options graduates have improved their reproductive health knowledge and feel empowered to make better decisions about their futures. And, because the program is developed hand-in-hand with local community leaders, parents and teachers, and implemented by local organizations, it is rooted in local values and builds more local champions for the education and empowerment of girls.

This Sunday, I will be thinking about the girls who are currently participating in CEDPA’s Better Life Options Program—and about Mother’s Day six years in the future. We are helping these girls to build better lives for themselves and their children, all of whom hopefully will be born after these girls leave their teenage years. Some of them may be entering motherhood in the year 2015, which is the target year for countries to reduce their maternal mortality by 75 percent, as promised in the Millennium Development Goals.

Will our graduates still live in a world where one woman dies every minute in pregnancy and childbirth, as they do today? Or, will countries worldwide have met their target, having finally summoned the will to make motherhood safer?

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