The Real Help Needed for Women in Developing Countries
What do Third World women need most? Is it condoms and vacuum aspirators or pre-natal, delivery and after-delivery medical care? The answer is obvious, and the UN’s Millennium Development Goals (MDG), in a perfect world, would see those needs and serve these women as they should. But Dr. Robert Walley, executive director of MaterCare International based in Newfoundland, Canada, has personally seen the results of the UN’s abortifacient and contraceptive invasion and their lack of the real maternal care these women need.
The UN’s MDGs have been much in the media lately, but unfortunately MDG 5, promising to reduce the maternal mortality rate by three-quarters, is not being promoted while those dealing with stopping women from having children get a good deal of promotion.
According to Dr. Walley, the lack of concern over MDG 5 has caused a large group of women to be denied their right to receive proper care during pregnancy and childbirth, resulting in their deaths. While developing countries are primarily concerned about motherhood and children, the developed countries are only concerned with AIDS, as people in developed countries are dying of AIDS while few die due to poor maternal medical care. This causes a lack of understanding among many in the USA and other developed countries. But in developing countries, nearly 600,000 mothers die annually due to hemorrhaging and unrelieved obstructed labor.
Not even NGOs (non-government organizations) seem aware of the problem. While they should be pressuring governments to help, they seem not to care. Dr. Walley reported that MaterCare International provided a workshop for the UN on the subject last year. It was attended by two NGOs: only 20 persons thought; the topic was important enough to address. The subject of maternal deaths and birth injury was not even mentioned in any of the MDG plenary sessions in the last two years.
There are signs of improvement. The UNFPA has changed its reproductive health policy to include a more balanced approach to lessening the maternal mortality problem. They have now created a strategy of universal contraceptive access, reducing “unwanted” pregnancies, providing skilled attendance at all births and emergency obstetric care. But much more help is needed.
Unfortunately, people in developed countries have been brainwashed into believing the basic problem for women in developing countries is unwanted pregnancies. What these women really want and need is access to the same essential obstetrical care available to pregnant women in developed countries. To satisfy those needs, the developing countries of the world need new initiatives of service, training, research and advocacy designed to contribute specifically to the reduction of maternal mortality, morbidity and abortion.
See the Source: “Maternal Health: Care and the Silent Tsunami, Interview With Director of MaterCare International,” ZENIT, Code: ZEO5091920, 19 September 2005, http://www.zenit.org/english
Pills that Play Games with Women’s Genes
The long term use of birth control pills today is commonplace, just as Prozac use is becoming more commonplace every day. But as all medications have side effects, so do Prozac and hormone-changing birth control pills. Research now tells us these drugs change not only the sexual habits of women, but they also negatively change their sex drive.
The two drugs have been proven to lead to underdeveloped sexuality, flattened moods, and in the case of birth control pill use, decreased fertility and even the inability to choose a good mate. The side effects are especially upsetting considering about 10.4 million women during their early dating and mating years are using the Pill.
One of the problems researchers have found among users of anti-depressants such as Prozac is a decreased libido (between 24% to 75%). The use of birth control drugs appear to change, among many other hormonal modifications to the body, the ability of a woman to choose a healthy, suitable mate. It seems playing with mother nature’s perfect hormonal balance confuses the body’s complex evolutionary ability to choose an optimal genetic mate.
Elle reports that large numbers of women who start the Pill report a drop in overall well-being. “A recent Kinsey Institute study of college-age women who went on the Pill found that 40% reported a diminished sex drive, and a similar proportion noted a reduction in well-being,” says the magazine. “Elizabeth Lee Vliet, MD, a women’s health specialist and the author of It’s My Ovaries, Stupid!, thinks that OCs’ negative impact on moods — she especially blames high-progesterone formulations — might even bring about the need for antidepressants: The Pill screws up a woman’s mood and libido, and then she ends up on Prozac.”
See the Source: Rachael Combe, “Sexual Chemistry,” Elle, September 2005, http://www.elle.comarticle.asp?article_id=2806§ion_id=35&page_number=1&magind_2764
