infant mortality

As mountaintop removal [MTR] has horned-in on underground mining, the health maladies of residents of eastern Kentucky, southwest Virginia, eastern Tennessee, and southwest West Virginia—Appalachia—have begun to pile up.

The State of Kansas has a health care crisis that it should be addressing, but instead the Brownback administration is a little tied up restricting women's access to low cost birth control and abortion care.

On New Year’s morning in January 2003, my life took a shocking turn with my obstetrician uttering three simple but devastating words: no fetal heartbeat. Several attempts to induce labor finally lead us to my first and only daughter’s stillbirth at dawn on Friday, January 3, 2003.

Thirty-eight of 58 countries surveyed may fail to meet their target of 95 percent coverage by skilled attendants by 2015 unless an additional 120,000 midwives are trained, deployed and retained. A new report also indicates that upgrading midwifery services could save more than 3.6 million lives each year by 2015.

Today, like every day, nearly 1000 women will die giving life; and many of their babies will not survive beyond the first hours and days after birth.

When mothers around the world are supported - by ensuring they have access to family planning - families, communities, and nations flourish.

The WHO lists 30 essential drugs for maternal and child health, Montanans don't want to ban abortion, Princeton Theological Seminarians upset by distribution of racist flyers, and health care reform turns one!

Today's bully, or let's say one of them because there are so many to deal with each day, is Representative Bob Latta, Republican from the 5th District in Ohio.  Mr. Latta has introduced an amendment to the GOP's proposed Continuing Resolution that would eliminate all funding for international family planning.  It could be voted on today.

Follow Jodi Jacobson on Twitter, @jljacobson

I traveled to Haiti for the first time in 2003.  I left there a different woman than I came. Women in Haiti are 70 times more likely than women in the U.S. to suffer and die from preventable conditions during pregnancy and childbirth.