MOMocrats™

Mother's Day Every Day: Share Your Stories

CARE and The White Ribbon Alliance for Safe Motherhood, partners in the campaign to prevent maternal mortality by providing expectant mothers around the world with access to basic prenatal care and childbirth support from a properly trained doctor, midwife or attendant, launched a new public awareness campaign in February called Mother's Day Every Day.

Every minute, somewhere in the world, another woman dies in pregnancy or childbirth.

In addition to being daughters, sisters, friends and wives, many of these women are also already mothers of other children. Because children who lose their mothers are much more likely to suffer from poverty, malnutrition and illness, one woman's death in pregnancy or childbirth can have a negative effect on an entire community.

But many of these deaths could be prevented with the most basic pregnancy and childbirth care.

In fact, in most developing nations, it would cost less to provide women access to basic medical care during pregnancy and childbirth than those nations are currently losing from decreased productivity due to maternal deaths.

This year, in honor of Mother's Day, MOMocrats is partnering with the White Ribbon Alliance to ask for your help. 

We want to help the White Ribbon Alliance spread the word about the importance of supporting and protecting mothers. So we're asking you, our readers, to share your own stories about how your children came into the world (or into your family). To participate, this week, before Mother's Day, write or re-post a birth or adoption story that has personal meaning for you on your blog. Then ask your readers to visit the Mother's Day Every Day website, and provide a link to MothersDayEveryDay.org.

Include the MDED button (code below) in your post or your blog sidebar, link back to this post, and then email us or leave a comment letting us know that you've joined the MOMocrats Mother's Day Every Day: Share Your Stories event. We'll post a link to your entry here on MOMocrats.com on Mother's Day.   

Unite for Hunger and Hope

Bloggers Unite and Heifer International have teamed up to raise awareness about world hunger today with the Unite for Hunger and Hope project. Bloggers Unite invites bloggers everywhere to join the effort and write a post about world hunger.

Previously on MOMocrats.com, we have featured several organizations that fight hunger and poverty both in developing countries and here in the United States:

Share our Strength fights childhood hunger in the U.S. by raising public awareness about hunger, organizing fundraisers, and awarding grants to hunger organizations and food pantries. MOMocrats partnered with Quaker Oats last year help to raise money for Save our Strength. 

Meds and Food for Kids is an organization that saves children from starvation in Haiti, one of the countries hit hardest by last year's spike in global food prices, by providing families with nutitional supplements created using locally grown ingredients; the group also teaches the local Hatian farmers who provide ingredients for their product new and better agricultural techniques and food safety methods. MOMocrats interviewed the founder of Meds and Food for Kids, Dr. Patricia Wolff, last December. 

Unicef also fights childhood hunger and poverty worldwide; in January, MOMocrats interviewed Dr. Brandao Co, UNICEF's chief of nutrition in Afghanistan, a country where agricultural production has been devastated by two decades of war, and current conflict makes it difficult for agencies to move food and medical supplies to the communities that need them. 

You can help fight world hunger by joining today's Bloggers Unite event, by donating to or writing about one of the organizations listed above, or by donating nonperisable items to your nearest food pantry.

Go Read It: Frank Rich on the Bush Administration, Torture, and Justifications for the Iraq War

Bush, but especially Cheney, would have the nation believe that information culled from torturing Abu Ghraib detainees "helped prevent another 9/11" and "kept us safe."

But that claim is worse than wishful thinking; it's untrue. Instead, Bush-Cheney authorized torture for a far worse purpose--so argues Frank Rich in an editorial in the NYT today.

Increasingly, evidence shows that torture was authorized by the Bush White House to extract information from detainees to manufacture information supporting an otherwise non-existent link between al Qaeda and Saddam Hussein, in order to bolster rationalizations for the United States' "pre-emptive strike" on Iraq. Not only is torture wrong, in this case the moral blight was a tool to mitigate the original moral blight: dragging the nation into war under false pretexts, when the Bush White House knew no connection between al Qaeda and Saddam Hussein existed.

Now that the truth is emerging, the question is: what do we the people do with it? I'm talking to all people of voting age in this country, no matter who you voted for in the past election. Do we even care? At the very least, don't we owe the families of 4,278 Iraq war dead a reckoning from the commander-in-chief who asked the ultimate sacrifice of them in bad faith?

Letter campaign succeeded in prompting Afghan review of Shia law stripping women of human rights

Dear MOMocrat Readers,

Urge President Karzai to fullfill his promise to revise the draft of Shia Law that would strip Afghan Women and Girls of their Human Rights

The thousands of letters you sent asking Afghan President Hamid Karzai and Afghan Ambassador to the U.S. Said Jawad to review the draft of a Shia family law that would strip Afghan women and girls of their basic human rights have made an impact! Karzai and Jawad have announced that the law will be revised in accordance with the Afghan constitution, which guarantees equal rights for women. Now, make sure Karzai fulfills his pledge.

Last week, hundreds of Afghan women in Kabul publicly protested the law, even though they were outnumbered by counter protesters and were pelted with small stones. We must stand with these courageous women.

Afghan women leaders in Parliament, in the Afghanistan Independent Human Rights Commission, and in non-profit organizations have continued to fight the proposed law as violation of the Afghan constitution and the basic human rights of women. We must lend our voices in support of our Afghan sisters.

While the Afghan government is revising the law, let President Karzai hear from you and as many people as you can reach. Now that he has pledged to revise the draconian draft law, we need to make sure that revisions to the law fully remove provisions that would restrict women from leaving their homes, working, going to school and obtaining medical care without their husbands' permission. We must also ensure that provisions granting child custody only to men and revoking women's right to refuse sex with their husbands are eliminated.

Join us in ensuring that all provisions that violate human rights are removed from the law or the law is eliminated.

Please send your message to President Karzai while his government is revising this oppressive law to ensure that the basic principals of human rights are maintained.

For Women's Lives,

Eleanor Smeal
President

P.S. And please join our Campaign for Afghan Women and Girls. As the Taliban have gained strength in Afghanistan over 1000 girls' schools have been destroyed. Teachers have been murdered - some right in front of their students. Acid is being thrown on girls' faces on their way to or from school. As the US shifts it attention to Afghanistan, we must do all we can to make sure Afghan women and girls are not forgotten!

The Most Important Protest That Happened on April 15th

While American news channels were preoccupied following conservatives who threw Fox News sponsored Tea Parties across the U.S. yesterday to vehemently protest . . . something . . . (The shoddily regulated corporate bailouts initiated by President Bush that most progressives also do not like? President Obama's proposed return to Clinton-era tax rates for Americans with incomes in the top two percent? Conservatives losing political power by will of the majority in a peaceful, legal, democratic election?) you may have missed the news about a much more important protest that took place on April 15th:

About 300 Afghan women gathered in Kabul and braved an angry mob of anti-feminist religious fundamentalists to march in protest against a recently passed law that women's rights and human rights groups worldwide have warned will legalize marital rape, promote child marriage and seriously curtail women's rights.

The law in question, the Shia Family Law, applies to members of the Shia sect of Islam, a minority in Afghanistan. The law makes it illegal for a Shia woman to refuse her husbands' request for sex unless she is physically ill. The law also allows child marriage among Shia Muslims, grants Shia fathers ultimate custody rights over their children, and requires that a Shia woman obtain her husband's permission before leaving the house.

Go Read It: Nicholas Kristof on International Family Planning

This past Sunday, New York Times columnist Nicholas Kristof wrote a glorious op-ed, Pregnant (Again) and Poor. In his column, Kristof highlighted women's unmet need for family planning services -- some 70 to 80 million unwanted pregnancies per year, according to the UN.

A few days later, he followed up with blog posts, including one that asked readers to share family planning organizations worthy of financial support. I've compiled the list below, with a few additions.

Also, if you want to see what happens when family planning isn't available and women resort to unsafe abortion, go watch Not Yet Rain, Lisa Russell's documentary -- made with help from Ipas (see below) -- on Ethiopia's 2006 decision to liberalize its abortion law.

Breaking News: Obama Response to North Korea Missile Launch

President Obama issued the following statement from the Czech Republic, in response to the news of North Korea's missile testing:

North Korea's development and proliferation of ballistic missile technology pose a threat to the northeast Asian region and to international peace and security.  The launch today of a Taepo-dong 2 missile was a clear violation of United Nations Security Council Resolution 1718, which expressly prohibits North Korea from conducting ballistic missile-related activities of any kind.  With this provocative act, North Korea has ignored its international obligations, rejected unequivocal calls for restraint, and further isolated itself from the community of nations.

We will immediately consult with our allies in the region, including Japan and the Republic of Korea, and members of the U.N. Security Council to bring this matter before the Council.  I urge North Korea to abide fully by the resolutions of the U.N. Security Council and to refrain from further provocative actions.

Preventing the proliferation of weapons of mass destruction and their means of delivery is a high priority for my administration.  The United States is fully committed to maintaining security and stability in northeast Asia and we will continue working for the verifiable denuclearization of the Korean Peninsula through the Six-Party Talks.  The Six-Party Talks provide the forum for achieving denuclearization, reducing tensions, and for resolving other issues of concern between North Korea, its four neighbors, and the United States.  North Korea has a pathway to acceptance in the international community, but it will not find that acceptance unless it abandons its pursuit of weapons of mass destruction and abides by its international obligations and commitments.

North Korea last launched missiles in 2006, which led to UN Resolution 1718.  This launch failed after 40 seconds, landing the missiles 800 miles off the coast of Japan.

Michelle Obama: We never knew how much we needed a First Lady like you until now

Watch this video clip of Michelle Obama visiting a girls' school and have a stack of hankies at the ready.

She makes me proud to be a woman, proud to be a mother, proud to be a mother of daughters, and proud to be an American.

Michelle Obama, with your "quiet strength and dignity," you are a shining, beaming symbol of hope that girls can be anything they wish to be. But more than that, you are a modern day living Lady Liberty who represents to world everything that is so great about our country. We can come from modest means, work hard, use our intellect and creativity to follow our dreams, and end up being an inspiration in the process. In these trying times, while your husband works to clean up the mess he inherited, you are our reassurance that everything is going to be okay.

Like you, we MOMocrats are educated women who are moms-in-chief. We feel no shame in staying home if we have to stay home or working if we have to work. Our children, like yours, will benefit from our smarts, values, and good judgment. You've shown us how important it is for children to have a place to play (where their lucky father can see them from his office), to plant own food so that our children can know where their produce comes from (and to grow extra to share), and you've shown us how to have compassion for others.

I feel the love you have for the people of this country every time you smile. I never knew how much we needed you to be our First Lady until I saw the Queen of England put her arm around you.  Thank you, Mrs. Obama.

—Stefania Pomponi Butler

Let Your Voice Be Heard: Foreign Affairs

The House Committee on Foreign Affairs is taking public comment on foreign assistance reform.

Rep. Howard Berman (D-CA) has indicated that one of his top priorities this congress is to rewrite the Foreign Assistance Act of 1961. The last attempt at rewriting the FAA was in 1994 when Clinton wanted to repeal it and replace it with the Peace, Prosperity, and Democracy Act; the bill never made it out of the House committee and was never introduced Senate-side. You can read then-Secretary of State Warren Christopher's remarks on the PPDA here.

Photo credit: Sokwanele on Flickr. Creative Commons License.

"I don't speak Japanese, but I do speak hammered..." [Rachel Maddow is Awesome]

Japan's "Timothy Geithner" copes with his country's financial crisis like so many other people apparently do: by getting completely shit-faced.