Mother's Day 2011

If we can save mothers, we won’t just save their individual lives; we’ll help save their children’s lives, boost their children’s education rates, and maintain and even boost agricultural productivity.

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.

Mother’s Day always makes me think about the up and down journey motherhood has been for me and many of the women I know. I had my first child at nineteen and I still don’t know how I made it. I worked two jobs, with the first one starting at five in the morning and the second one finishing at nine at night. I couldn’t afford full-time childcare, so I moved my son Danny between two part-time centers that weren’t as good as I hoped for but better than I could afford.

The pro-choice movement and the birthing community alike are waking up to the fact that abortion rights and the rights of childbearing women are inextricably linked.

Childbirth can be a deadly matter in the U.S., especially if you are middle or working class. But it was when looking at race and income together that one civil rights organization decided it needed a new lens.

Like most six-year-olds, little bits of information about the world leave my son asking, “Why? And why not??” I didn’t want to answer: "why are people celebrating the fact that this man is dead?"

Jaime and Laura are a lesbian couple in California whose son suffers from a serious heart condition.  Without legal protections, their family would have suffered far more hardship than they did. Jaime addresses supporters of Prop 8 in a letter.