Mother's Day Edition

By Ann Lewis on 05/04/2009 @ 06:00 PM

Getting ready for Mother's Day: news that will make a difference in the lives of mothers in your family and around the world, and some wonderful on-line stores that can reach both at once.

IMPORTANT NEWS ABOUT HEALTH CARE

We know one gift that will be cherished by mothers across America: passage of a real health care reform bill. President Obama has made clear that health care is one of his priorities, and leaders in Congress have pledged to work together to get it done. We also know the opposition is gearing up to fight, and that one of their strategies is likely to be a filibuster: endless debate in the Senate to prevent action.

That's why it's such good news that the budget passed by Congress last week contains this key provision: If the House and Senate don't act on health care reform by October 15th, health care will be considered according to the reconciliation process. Reconciliation, you'll remember, means a majority vote.

With billions and billions of health are dollars at stake, we're all going to need to get engaged in this debate and make our voices heard!

Here's a start: If you hear someone complaining that reconciliation is somehow unfair, remind them that a majority vote is the essence of democracy - and isn't that what we're all about?

HONORING MOTHERS AROUND THE WORLD

While we celebrate mothers here in the United States, take a minute to think about mothers and motherhood around the world - because for too many women, there's too little to celebrate:

* More than 500,000 women die very year from pregnancy related diseases: 99% in the developing world; 1 in 26 in Africa.
* More than a third of girls worldwide are married off before they reach adulthood, often to much older men. They endure early and repeated pregnancies: girls under fifteen years of age are five times more likely to die during pregnancy and childbirth than women in their twenties.
* According to the World Health Organization, complications from unsafe abortions caused 14% of maternal deaths and a fifth of the mortality and disability due to pregnancy and childbirth.

Good health care - including reproductive and maternal health care - can save the lives and health of vulnerable women; but for the last eight years, our country turned away - sacrificing women's lives to a hostile ideology.
That's why we cheered when President Obama lifted the Global Gag Rule, so that the United States once again funds family planning organizations worldwide.
We cheered again when the State Department announced that the U.S. will resume U.S. contributions to the United Nations Population Fund, which does valuable work for women's health.
And we cheered ourselves hoarse when Secretary of State Hillary Clinton spoke up for women, and took on opponents of family planning in her April 22 testimony to the House Foreign Affairs Committee:

"When I think about the suffering that I have seen of women around the world - I've been in hospitals in Brazil where half the women were enthusiastically and joyfully greeting new babies and the other half were fighting for their lives against botched abortions. I've been in African countries where 12 and 13-year-old girls are bearing children. I have been in Asian countries where the denial of family planning consigns women to lives of oppression and hardship." Secretary Hillary Clinton said. "We happen to think that family planning is an important part of women's health - and reproductive health includes access to abortion that I believe should be safe, legal, and rare."

Click here to watch Hillary's historic statement:

BECAUSE WE CAN ALL MAKE A DIFFERENCE

And while we're thinking globally: What better time than Mother's Day to remember that we can celebrate the women we know, and reach out to women around the world at the same time, by buying products women make to support themselves and their families. Here are some of our on-line favorites:

* Paper to Pearls offers jewelry made by women in refugee camps in Northern Uganda, with proceeds going to buy food, medicine and school supplies:http://www.papertopearls.org/welcome.html
* Vital Voices identifies, trains and empowers women leaders around the world, enabling them to build better societies in their own countries and international coalitions that women everywhere join to combat global issues affecting women and girls: http://www.bridgeforafrica.org/catalog/index.php?cPath=20
* Women for Women International supports women in war-ravaged regions, of Afghanistan, Bosnia, the Congo, Iraq and Rwanda, providing financial and personal assistance to survivors of violence, enabling women to rebuild their lives and provide for their families: http://www.womenforwomen.org/help-women/online-store-supporting-wom...


Sincerely,

Ann Lewis

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