SAVING WOMEN�S LIVES
Fistula in Bangladesh
Xinhua General News Service reported September 29 that an estimated 240,000 women suffer from obstetric fistula every year in Bangladesh, according to the official Bangladesh News Agency. This was revealed at a workshop held by UNFPA and the Directorate General of Health Services of Bangladesh as part of joint efforts to develop doctors to deal with the problem. Obstetric fistula is one of the worst pregnancy-related disabilities, an uncontrollable incontinence generally caused by injuries suffered during delivery. Girls in the rural areas are the primary victims, as they are married off in their teens when their bodies are not ready for childbearing. The Bangladesh government has set up a National Fistula Center under Dhaka Medical College and Hospital with technical and financial support from UNFPA, which is working to reduce mortality and morbidity of mothers and newborns. Read: The New Nation (Bangladesh)

Women: Untapped Economic Resource
The New York Times reported September 17 on a World Bank study calling women a "huge, untapped" economic resource in the Middle East and North Africa. More women workers are needed there to transform economies that must depend increasingly on private-sector exports to compete worldwide. "No country can raise the standard of living and improve the well-being of its people without the participation of half of its population," said Christiaan Poortman, World Bank vice president for the Middle East and North Africa. "Experience in other countries has shown over and over again that women are important actors in development," he said. Read: New York Times

U.S. Representatives See Maternal and Child Hospital in Iraq
The Associated Press reported September 29 that Rep. Jerry Lewis (R-CA) and seven other delegation members peered into incubators at premature babies and greeted expectant mothers at the al-Yarmouk hospital in western Baghdad. �We have been shocked by the conditions of the infrastructure in general, and this hospital is a reflection of just how bad the situation is," Lewis said. "Those mothers have the highest priority ... so that their children can live long and healthy lives. This is the future of Iraq here." According to Dr. Mahdi Jasim Moosa, the hospital director, the staff is expecting six new U.S.-funded generators, four of them for the maternity ward the lawmakers inspected. "There has been a lot of controversy about the money needed for Iraq, but when Congress members see the conditions here, they will recognize that this money is badly needed," said Rep. Norman Dicks, D-WA, a member of the House Appropriations Committee. Read: Associated Press

Millions of Mothers and Children Die Unnecessarily
Reuters reported September 18 that more than 80 million mothers and children will die unnecessarily over little more than a decade through misguided policies and lack of cash, according to the Grow Up Free coalition, which includes the Catholic aid agency CAFOD, Save the Children, Tearfund, EveryChild and HelpAge International. According to BBC News� September 18 story, �The Millennium Development Goals � agreed by UN member states three years ago - aim to cut child mortality by two thirds and maternal death rates by three quarters by 2015. However, this latest report suggests many countries will struggle to meet these targets.� CAFOD's head of public policy George Gelber said, "We stress that while we cannot make progress without more resources, at the same time we need a careful analysis of why policies have failed in the past and how we must implement new policies.� Read: BBC News

Helping Midwives in India
InterPresa Service featured a September 30 story on a voluntary organization, Society for Education, Action and Research in Community Health (SEARCH), which has for the last 12 years in India shown how ordinary villagers and illiterate 'dais' or midwives can be instructed to take care of newborns in the absence of doctors. Like health workers in the 40-odd other villages of Gadchiroli district where SEARCH has been working, Maya Umargundavar has been trained in simple first-aid methods, such as prompt resuscitation of the newborn, preparing and monitoring feeding schedules, and monitoring infants by examining their feet for warmth and color. These simple methods, when applied and supported by the SEARCH center in the forests of Gadchiroli, have brought about a revolution in thinking and practice on neonatal survival. Dr. Rani and Abhay Bang, a gynecologist and physician respectively, established SEARCH in 1986. �No doctor reaches [these infants]; often their deaths go unrecorded,� Dr. Bang said. �These newborn deaths constitute 75 percent of the infant mortality rate in India. While current medical guidelines insists upon hospitalization to avert neonatal morbidity and mortality, India is in no position to bear the total burden of 13 million babies who need hospitalization every year.� Read: Inter Press Service

U.S. ABORTION POLITICS
Senate to Vote on Partial-Birth Abortion
The New York Times reported September 18 that the first federal law restricting a woman's right to abortion moved a step closer to President Bush's signature when the Senate finally agreed to send the bill to conference with the House. Backers of the measure, which would outlaw the procedure that opponents call partial-birth abortion, say they hope to have it on Mr. Bush's desk later this fall. The only remaining obstacle is a provision, contained in the Senate bill but not the House version, that affirms Senate support for the 1973 Supreme Court decision in Roe v. Wade, which legalized abortion. As part of today's action, the Senate voted 93 to 0 to affirm that right again, disagreeing with the House bill. Typically, a vote to send a bill to conference is a pro forma measure, agreed to by both parties without a legislative debate. But in this case, Democrats refused to consent. Instead, Sen. Barbara Boxer, D-CA, insisted on an additional eight hours of debate and a formal vote disagreeing with the House measure. Boxer said she wanted to set the stage for a judicial review by once again putting senators on record as supporting Roe. "I want the Senate to take a very strong stand for Roe so that when this goes to the court, the court will see that in the record," she said. She also accused the House of trying to undermine the Roe decision. "That's their real agenda," Mrs. Boxer said. "All they had to do was accept the Senate language and this bill would be on the president's desk." Read: New York Times, Reuters

Cano Wants to Overturn Roe v. Wade
The Atlanta Journal and Constitution (GA) reported September 23 on Sandra Cano, who was the anonymous Georgia plaintiff "Mary Doe" in the companion lawsuit to Roe v. Wade, the landmark U.S. Supreme Court case that legalized abortion in 1973. Today, Cano is again a plaintiff, only now she is seeking publicly to overturn Roe v. Wade. "Abortion has hurt millions of women, and I regret my role," Cano, now 55, said in a telephone interview. "That's not the legacy I want to leave.�

Naral Pro-Choice America President Steps Down
A September 22 story by The New York Times reported that Kate Michelman plans to step down as president of Naral Pro-Choice America, ending 18 years at the helm of the country's most vocal abortion rights group. She said she would leave her post on April 30, 2004, to care for her ailing husband and their daughter. Michelman said she gave the group's board at least six months' notice, allowing her to lead a march in Washington on April 25 in favor of abortion rights. For all her efforts, Michelman said in an interview, her opponents are gaining ground and might win the debate. "Women face today as grave a threat as ever to their Constitutional right to personal privacy and to a choice," she said. "Americans have become complacent in the belief that this right will never be taken away, and they are wrong." Read: New York Times

HIV/AIDS WORLDWIDE
New Focus on AIDS Fight: Rights for Women
A Women�s Enews September 28 story noted that women are quickly becoming the new face of AIDS in the regions hardest hit by the disease and may herald the future of AIDS worldwide. In 2000, women were 50 percent of adults living with HIV worldwide for the first time since the pandemic began more than 20 years ago. "If current trends continue we'll see a larger percentage of women infected and affected," said Sandra Thurman, president of the International AIDS trust, based in Washington, D.C. "Women have moved from the periphery of this epidemic to the heart of it in less than a decade.� To attack the problem, the International AIDS Trust's Women's Leadership Initiative, a powerful coalition of female world leaders � including Mary Robinson, former president of Ireland and former UN High Commissioner for Refugees, and Kathleen Cravero, deputy director of UNAIDS � announced its formation in New York. Women's rights, according to founders, will be the centerpiece of the initiative's plan to curb HIV infections among women. Read: Women�s Enews

Machismo One of Biggest Challenges in War on AIDS
Agence France-Presse (AFP) reported September 25 on a conference in Nairobi on AIDS where male attitudes towards women and sex were the focus of attention. Those attitudes have long been acknowledged as one of the biggest sources of Africa's AIDS pandemic, but changing them is a task that would make Hercules despair. Experts at the ICASA AIDS conference described the typical African male as almost a walking HIV risk. The major risk-takers are migrant workers and truck drivers who are lonely and far from home, flushed with cash and alcohol, and tempted into unprotected sex with prostitutes - "Money and missing my honey," as the saying goes. AFP noted that altering attitudes to make African men more aware and more responsible is a mighty task. "It's the male ego," said Cary Alan Johnson, representative in Zimbabwe for Africare.

EDITORIALS AND OPINIONS
The Atlanta Journal and Constitution (GA) ran a September 19 editorial condemning the U.S. Senate decision to send to House-Senate conference a bill outlawing late-term abortions. The ban is similar to a Nebraska law that was ruled unconstitutional by the U.S. Supreme Court on a 5-4 vote three years ago. �Many Americans are disgusted with the divisive abortion politics which have raged for more than a decade,� the editorial said. �Given the economic and foreign policy challenges that the country faces, you'd think lawmakers could find other matters on which to focus their attention�The Republican Party has made constraints on a woman's private reproductive decisions a litmus test for �conservatism.� That turns the very definition of limited government on its head.�

The New York Times chimed in on the issue in a September 19 editorial: the bill has �precisely the defects that led to the Supreme Court's rejection of the Nebraska statute. But that does not seem to trouble the measure's backers, starting with President Bush. Their actions show a troubling disrespect not just for the rights of women, but also for truth, and the rule of law.� Read: New York Times

The St. Louis Post-Dispatch (MO) ran an editorial September 28 that noted, �If words were legal tender and promises gold, then Western nations including the United States would be justly proud of their response to the AIDS pandemic. Instead, they should be ashamed.� A Washington Post editorial on September 27 observed that �In this country, President Bush's much-trumpeted global AIDS initiative is mired in a spat over funding levels�The real problem, though, seems to lie not in Africa but in the administration's inability to distribute the money. In fact, at this stage, there is reason for concern about whether even the lower funding levels will actually get spent in the first year�If the process is not streamlined, the life-saving aid Mr. Bush promised so dramatically in his State of the Union Address in January will not arrive in Africa any time soon.� Read: St. Louis Post-Dispatch, Washington Post

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The above summary was written by Elena Cabatu and Kathy Bonk at the Communications Consortium Media Center, 1200 New York Avenue, NW, Suite 300, Washington, DC 20005, 202/326-8700. Redistributi