"Prudence's Struggle Ends"

For the last two Sundays, the New York Times' Nicholas Kristof has written from a hospital in Yokadouma, Cameroon, located in the far southeast corner of Cameroon in the Est province near the Central African Republic, about a woman dying from complications from a botched birth. Usually I ignore Kristof's articles because his reports on dire situations from third world countries is preaching to the choir with me, and I'd rather read Frank Rich pick apart the Bush administration (preaching to choir, yes, but a lot more entertaining). However, I've had to read Kristof's columns since I saw the Cameroon byline. The gist of the article from today's paper is that rural females in Cameroon, and in developing countries in general, are cruelly ignored:

"Neither Western donor countries like the U.S. nor poor recepients like Cameroon care much about Africans who are poor, rural, and female, and so half a million such women die each year around the world in pregnancy. It's not biology that kills them so much as neglect."

Kristof continues by connecting the lack of funding for maternal health care for poor women to abortion politics:

"Neither left nor right has focused adequately on maternal health. And abortion politics have distracted all sides from what is really essential: a major aid campaign to improve midwifery, prenatal care and emergency obstetric services in poor countries."

He then cites the examples of Sri Lanka and Honduras, poor countries that have decreased maternal mortality drastically.