Last Monday, Amnesty International held an event at Riverside Church to kick off their campaign called Deadly Delivery to fight the deplorable rates of maternal mortality both in the US and around the world. The event was a panel which included Larry Cox, the Executive Director of Amnesty International USA; Dr. Jennifer Dohrn, Assistant Professor at Columbia University School of Nursing; Silvia Rosario Loli Espinoza, Executive Director of Amnesty Peru; Yves Boukari Traore, Executive Director of Amnesty Burkina Faso; and Brima Abdulai Sheriff, Director of Amnesty Sierra Lone.

This campaign is part of a larger goal of Amnesty International's which is to draw attention to healthcare as a human right. While healthcare as a human right as been a point of advocacy for activist groups for a long time, it has shifted into the spotlight recently with the health care reform legislation debate. It is the question of if the ability to keep yourself and your family healthy with proper access to health care should be a reflection on ability to pay. In other words, should health be a luxury or a right afforded to every human being by their governments?

In my opinion, inability to access health care due to the barrier of financial status is most definitely a human rights abuse. In 1966 on this same issue, Martin Luther King Jr. remarked, “Of all the forms of inequality, injustice in health care is the most shocking and inhumane”. It goes without saying that of all political issues, this topic deals most directly at the costs of lives. The right to health includes not only the ability for individuals to see a doctor when they need to but encompasses a broader range of issues as well such as poverty, education, and access.

The United States spends more on health care and more on maternal health than almost all other Western countries but has basically the worst health outcomes across all categories. According to the Maternal Health Care Report by Amnesty International, a woman dying in childbirth in the United States is 3x greater than in Spain, 4x greater than in Germany, and 5x greater than Greece. More frightening is that in the U.S., African-American women are four times more likely to die in complications of pregnancy than white women. It is within these health disparities that this issue becomes political. This health crisis is an emergency that sits at the peak of many issues such as discrimination, finance and bureaucratic barriers.

To start off, women of color are less likely to have access to adequate maternal health care services, which leaves them immediately vulnerable to complications in pregnancy. This is the result of discrimination both directly and indirectly. In the report Deadly Delivery by Amnesty, “women of color are more likely to experience discriminatory and inappropriate treatment and poorer quality of care”. In an indirect way, structural mechanisms such as the placement of hospitals and clinics leave some communities underserved and unable to receive pre-natal care among other things. Additionally, “despite representing only 32 percent of women, women of color make up 52 percent of women with insurance” (Deadly Delivery). Without the coverage of insurance, the ability for women to cover health care costs is difficult and costly. This leaves families with the decision of whether to pay the mortgage or get pre-natal vitamins. People should not have to make these decisions about their health.

To address maternal mortality, overall system failures must also be examined. In the USA, almost half of pregnancies are unintended, with even higher rates in communities of women of color and low income. While there are many not for profit family planning agencies, about 8 million women in this country are estimated to be in need to family planning services funded by the government (Deadly Delivery). On the private insurance side, only 27 states require health insurance policies that cover prescription drugs to also cover contraceptives prescribed by a doctor. Understaffing and inadequate care at hospitals is also a sizeable barrier to quality maternal health care for these expecting women.

This article outlines only a few of the barriers many women face in this country to receiving care, and while the focus is on women of color in the United States, there is something at stake for everyone. The burden of disease and death falls on the shoulders of all of us as a country in many ways. In addition to the human loss of children who grow up without mothers, it is also possible that the family is pushed into poverty without that extra income of the adult. This is then translated into taxes that every member of the country pays. Ensuring the good health of the country leads to economic gain in the fact that government will have to spend less on health. Overall, it costs less to prescribe preventative medication and pre-natal check-ups than it does to do emergency surgery and care for a patient who comes in with pregnancy complications. It is when the government starts getting smarter with its investments into health that change will start to occur.

I leave you with this quote by Lee Jong-wook, Director-General, World Health Organization (2003-2006), “Mothers, the newborn and children represent the well-being of a society and its potential for the future. Their health needs cannot be left unmet without harming the whole of society.”

Want to learn more? CHECK OUT THIS WEBSITE TO READ THE ENTIRE REPORT: http://www.amnestyusa.org/demand-dignity/maternal-health-is-a-human-right/the-united-states/page.do?id=1351091