One strategy is understanding what people know about their laws and what they don’t. It’s very clear that the law doesn’t change the number of abortions—it just changes the number of deaths from abortions. Because when the law allows a safe service, women don’t die…
Tell me about the Women Deliver Conference.
Women Deliver is going to happen in October of this year [2007] in London … It’s been twenty years and we wanted to say to the world, “Look, this is still a problem and it shouldn’t be.” And we know how technically to save women’s lives. So we need to set about doing that. But, we need help. We need a few things. The health sector can do the saving of lives part. But like Fathalla said about “Mrs. X,” it takes a lot of other groups and interests to help those women thrive. Survival is one thing, but then it’s the bigger responsibility to help women thrive. So we need help…
It’s based on the MDG structure. We’re starting with Number 5 [Improve women’s health and reduce maternal mortality], which is our anchor… And then it moves to Number 4 [infant mortality and adolescence] and then it’s HIV and AIDS because it’s becoming a young girls’ and women’s issue [6]… and then we need 2, which is education. If there’s a silver bullet, it’s educating girls, and then gender equity and empowerment of women.
So, we’re inviting these communities and the human rights community because our whole aim is the overall one, which is eradicating poverty. Our starting point is improving women’s health and saving women’s lives. Then we’re asking the child health community, the HIV community, the education community, and the gender equity groups to work with us to make this real.
There has not been sufficient political commitments, so at Women Deliver, we’re inviting visibly politically strong people, heads of state, parliamentarians… we’ve chosen thirty countries that are high-burden countries [and] inviting the ministers of finance, ministers of planning…
Mary Robinson, who was president of Ireland, is bringing with her the ministers of health, and she said it’s so key for them to sit with Finance and Planning. They never do.
