Reflections on Motherhood
By Marjorie Newman-Williams, President, MSI United States
Thanks to the vaccine, many of us were able to get together to celebrate Mother’s Day this year. After a year that included sacrificing family celebrations for everyone’s safety, I started thinking about how important family is and how central to family “Mom” is.
In advertising and movies, the mother is always selfless, tirelessly working to give her children every advantage. It is mom making breakfast and packing lunches, volunteering at school and helping with homework while cooking dinner. It is mom who’s still up at midnight sewing costumes for the school play. Sacrifice is the theme. And, it is universal.
Everywhere in the world, at every socio-economic level, mothers are willing to sacrifice to help their children thrive. Prioritizing our children’s needs over our own is inherently maternal. It begins before we’ve even shared the joyful news. We replace our nightly glass of wine with pre-natal vitamins. We swap our favorite magazines for books on how to be a good mother, throw out the salty snacks and start eating healthier. We do it happily, because we are overjoyed with anticipation.
But for millions of women around the world, pregnancy is not met with joy and congratulations because it was not their choice.
Right now, there are 218 million women and girls around the world who want contraception but have no way to get it. Some can’t afford it, others face social stigma and others live somewhere without pharmacies or doctors. These women know they do not want to be pregnant, but they have little ability to prevent it. We see these women every day at MSI.
The doctors, nurses and midwives who work for MSI serve women who worry about how to care for, feed and educate their children, just like mothers everywhere.
Many are married women, living in poverty. Some have career ambitions and others simply cannot feed and care for another child or can’t stop working because their family’s food security and well-being depends precariously on them. In my own travels for MSI, I have met many adolescent girls and young women who aren’t ready to become mothers; others who can’t imagine going through another pregnancy.
In far too many cases, pregnancy is life-threatening and results in millions of preventable deaths. Pregnancy-related causes is still the number one cause of death among women of childbearing age in several countries in 2021, although the know-how to stop this tragic loss of life exists, and the necessary funding is available if governments, policy makers and social investors made this a priority. This sacrifice of women’s lives should be universally unacceptable in the 21st century.
Reliable, modern contraception to prevent unintended pregnancies and safe abortion services can be made available to any woman who wants these services, yet 35 million women a year still put their lives at risk by seeking an unsafe abortion; tragically, 22,000 of them will die. Many are already mothers, and the impact is devastating for individuals, families and whole communities. The personal and societal costs are hard to quantify but exorbitant.
At MSI all of our clients want greater control over their bodies, so they can decide if and when to become mothers. Motherhood is a choice that every woman is entitled to make for herself. It is what MSI advocates and what our 10,000 team members in 37 countries around the world work to make possible every day.
Giving every woman this control if she wants it, is an achievable goal. It only costs $8 to give a woman access to the contraception of her choice for a year and the benefits are impressive. It is estimated that for every additional $1 a country spends on contraception; $3 in medical costs are saved; the exponential benefits of girls completing high school and women participating in their countries’ economies are additional.
By ensuring that women everywhere have access to comprehensive reproductive health care services and products, this could be a world in which every child born is wanted and every mother is a woman ready to make the sacrifices that come with motherhood.
To find out more about how you can make reproductive choice possible, visit msiunitedstates.org.
