The country knows when a mother loses one child for a short while during an outrageous hospital abduction.
And the entire world knows when an airliner leaves Malaysia and then vanishes mysteriously.
But what about when mother upon mother lose their newborns? Or an airliner full of mothers goes down?
It happened yesterday. Did you hear? And today. Sadly, it will again tomorrow.
This is the unfortunate truth. More than 300,000 mothers, that is 365 large airliners filled with women, women who in the developing world die in one horrible way or another during pregnancy and childbirth, crashes in flames every year.
You know something about it. Prime Minister Harper has made it a priority to tell you that we can no longer ignore this global blight.
The PM did so with his Mukoka Initiative in 2010, and he’s doing so again, right now, today, tomorrow and Friday, at the Saving Every Woman Every Child summit in Toronto.
My children and I know something about it too, because Their Mom, My Bride, who is the founding director of Save the Mothers, has made it her life work to help save at least some of these women and children.
So the media has come knocking and My Bride has found a corner here and there, even at home.
The girls’ bedroom, a tiny room in our Ancaster condo that will eventually cause our growing daughters to pick up revolutionary arms, did just fine yesterday.
That was for Radio Canada, which was after this first CBC piece, an excellent primer on all this.
More CBC is tomorrow, then Sun TV, that one at the conference down the highway at the Royal York in Toronto, where this is all now getting the attention it certainly needs.
It’s been remarkable to observe this shift in awareness. When My Bride started her tireless efforts – I can still picture her in the first years of our marriage running around Yemen in her black balto, there, harnessing forces who didn’t even speak her language – few on this side of the ocean had anything on any radar.
But, along with others, Jean kept pushing. Let’s talk about it. Let’s train indigenous leaders. Let’s help people help themselves.
Now much of the Canadian public at least has the knowledge that these aircrafts are going down.
The ongoing need, of course, is to keep going and to stay long enough there, on the ground, to listen and then help indigenous cultures change, more than anything, their patriarchal attitudes from within.
It’s not just about money. “We, in the west, can be so naïve,” is how Jean put it when we were talking about it the other day.
It’s about that on-the-ground partnering and using the tools that are, in fact, in our hands.
So that mothers and children can have what we so easily take for granted, that is life itself.
Tomorrow My Bride joins a panel discussion with Jordan’s royal princess Sarah Zeid at the PM’s summit on how Canada and other rich countries can continue building the right sort of partnerships.
These are our days. My Bride continues to run.
And in this household, we keep applauding her, this princess.
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If you want to read more on My Bride being a princess and maternal death being a scourge, read here and here
Well said Thomas!
I along with countless other people support and applaud all the very hard work accomplished by your princess, Dr. Jean.
Blessings on you and your family.
Sincerely,
Susan XXXXX