Mother's Day in the Developing World

The Mother's Day edition of the New York Times provides a collection of opinions by women's health experts on how to improve the well-being of mothers in the developing world. A variety of useful recommendations is presented regarding medicine, counseling and education and all are premised on the notion that somebody should be giving developing-world mother's something.

In total, the ideas are worth considering, however, I contend that the listing of do-gooder ideas is notable by what it doesn't address. The chief difficulty for mothers and mothers-to-be in the developing world is to simply live. Just living is a necessary prerequisite to being a mother and it should come before, or at least along with, any discussion regarding how well that being is.

The Times skated on the opportunity to raise the issues of honor killings, infanticide of female babies and strapping bomb belts on young girls for man-caused disaster incidents. Through these practices, the developing world annually kills an outrageous number of mothers and mothers-to-be.

I suggest that any serious discussion on improving the well-being of mothers should start with ideas on how to stop killing them.

Companion post at The Jawa Report.