Clinton announces alliance to promote maternal and infant health

Secretary Clinton yesterday announced an international alliance to improve infant and maternal health in sub-Saharan Africa and South Asia. The five-year effort joins the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation with the development agencies of the U.S., Australian, and British governments in an effort to "increase access to family planning and reduce maternal and neonatal deaths," as Clinton put it.

In her remarks, made at U.N. Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon’s Millennium Development Goals maternal and child health event, Clinton said:

Our effort will contribute [to] increasing access to family planning by 2015 for 100 million women who now lack it. It will also boost the number of skilled birth attendants, babies delivered in clinics or hospitals, and women and newborns who receive quality medical care.

Infant and maternal health is an issue that people both agree on and disagree on so strongly. Everyone agrees on promoting infant and maternal health. How can anyone be against healthy babies and healthy moms? But then there are the divisive issues of contraception and abortion.

U.S. Rep. Chris Smith (R-N.J.), ranking Republican on the House Foreign Affairs subcommittee on Africa and global health, wrote an op-ed in Sept. 19’s Washington Post warning that abortion-rights activists could sidetrack this week’s meetings on the Millennial Development Goals. He singled out Clinton, pointing out that she "has said publicly that she believes access to abortion is part of maternal and reproductive health." (And indeed, her remarks on the topic irked many Canadians when she visited Canada in March.) Smith cautioned that "Including abortion in the U.N. Outcome Document or in its implementation will undermine the Millennium Development Goals."

Curiously, Smith’s op-ed never mentioned the term "contraceptive" or anything that could be interpreted as its synonym. Maybe it was outside the scope of his op-ed, but if you want to reduce abortions, one of the obvious things to do is to improve access to contraceptives for women who want them. Without a conception, you can’t have an abortion.

For the sake of women and infants worldwide, let’s hope activists on both sides of the abortion debate don’t let their disagreements get in the way of important mutally-agreed-upon measures that save the lives of some of the most vulnerable people on Earth.