Mr. Bush, This Is Pro-Life? - New York Times
The New York Times

October 23, 2005

Mr. Bush, This Is Pro-Life?
By
NICHOLAS D. KRISTOF

ZINDER, Niger

When I walked into the maternity hospital here, I wished that President Bush
were with me.

A 37-year-old woman was lying on a stretcher, groaning from labor pains and
wracked by convulsions. She was losing her eyesight and seemed about to slip
into a coma from eclampsia, a complication of pregnancy that kills 50,000
women a year in the developing world. Beneath her, cockroaches skittered
across
the floor.

"We're just calling for her husband," said Dr. Obende Kayode, an
obstetrician. "When he provides the drugs and surgical materials, we can do
the operation,"
a Caesarean section.

Dr. Kayode explained that before any surgery can begin, the patient or
family members must pay $42 for a surgical kit with bandages, surgical
thread and
antibiotics.

In this case, the woman - a mother of six named Ramatou Issoufou - was
lucky. Her husband was able to round up the sum quickly, without having to
sell any
goats. Moreover, this maternity hospital had been equipped by the U.N.
Population Fund - and that's why I wished Mr. Bush were with me. Last month,
Mr.
Bush again withheld all U.S. funds from the U.N. Population Fund.

The Population Fund promotes modern contraception, which is practiced by
only 4 percent of women in Niger, and safe childbirth. But it has the money
to
assist only a few areas of Niger, and Mrs. Issoufou was blessed to live in
one of them.

Nurses wheeled her into the operating theater, scrubbed her belly and
administered a spinal anesthetic. Then Dr. Kayode cut open her abdomen and
reached
inside to pull out a healthy 6-pound, 6-ounce boy. (
A video of the delivery.)

After removing the placenta, Dr. Kayode stitched up Mrs. Issoufou. Her
convulsions passed, and it was clear that she and the baby would survive.
For all
the criticism heaped on the U.N., these were two more lives saved by the
U.N. Population Fund - no thanks to the Bush administration.

Even when they don't die, mothers often suffer horrific childbirth injuries.
In the town of Gouré, a 20-year-old woman named Fathi Ali was lying
listlessly
on a cot, leaking urine. After she was in labor for three days, her mother
and her aunt had put her on a camel and led her 40 miles across the desert
to
a clinic - but midway in the journey the baby was stillborn and she suffered
a fistula, an internal injury that leaves her incontinent.

Village women are the least powerful people on earth. That's why more than
500,000 women die every year worldwide in pregnancy - and why we in the West
should focus more aid on preventing such deaths in poor countries.

Mr. Bush and other conservatives have blocked funds for the U.N. Population
Fund because they're concerned about its involvement in China. They're right
to be appalled by forced sterilizations and abortions in China, and they
have the best of intentions. But they're wrong to blame the Population Fund,
which
has been pushing China to ease the coercion - and in any case the solution
isn't to let African women die. (Two American women have started a wonderful
grass-roots organization that seeks to make up for the Bush cuts with
private donations; its website is
www.34millionfriends.org.)

After watching Dr. Kayode save the life of Mrs. Issoufou and her baby, I was
ready to drop out of journalism and sign up for medical school. But places
like Niger need not just doctors, but resources.

Pregnant women die constantly here because they can't afford treatment
costing just a few dollars. Sometimes the doctors and nurses reach into
their own
pockets to help a patient, but they can't do so every time.

"It depends on the mood," Dr. Kayode said. "If the [staff] feel they can't
pay out again, then you just wait and watch. And sometimes she dies."

A few days earlier, a pregnant woman had arrived with a dangerously high
blood pressure of 250 over 130; it was her 12th pregnancy. Dr. Kayode
prescribed
a medicine called Clonidine for the hypertension, but she did not have the
$13 to buy it. Nor could she afford $42 for a Caesarean that she needed.

During childbirth, right here in this hospital, she hemorrhaged and bled to
death.

Somewhere in the world, a pregnant woman dies like that about once a minute,
often leaving a handful of orphans behind. Call me naïve, but I think that
if Mr. Bush came here and saw women dying as a consequence of his confused
policy, he would relent. This can't be what he wants - or what America
stands
for.

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The New York Times Company

Posted by Miriam V.