"POINT OF VIEW : FAITH, WOMEN AND HEALTH" , World Ecology Report, Winter 2003, Vol. XIV, No. 4

International organizations serving women's health, especially the health needs of poor women, have lost funding because of a revival of the belief that aiding and advising poor women about their health - including reproductive health - violates the will of God. Helping poor women to plan their families - the thinking goes - promotes the killing of babies unborn.

Given this line of thought, how is it moral to promote the killing of the already born? Some family planning averse nations execute criminals and traitors. Nations practicing a fundamentalist interpretation of Islamic Sharia law sanction the public murder of women who have pre or extra marital sex. Their male partners suffer no comparable punishment. In the US, Texas is one of the states that allows the death penalty. A nation sending its youth to war will certainly send some of its young citizens to their death. Is the life of the living less sacred than the life of the prenatal?

The supporters of this view would agree that embryonic human life afloat in a woman's womb is more sacred than the life of the woman carrying the embryo because if she cannot afford to raise her child, if she is not mentally fit for mothering, if the birth of another child will throw her other children out of school and into poverty, that is just too bad. The unborn must live regardless of the circumstances into which it will be born and regardless of its mother's capacity to make choices benefiting herself and the welfare of her family. Too bad for everyone except the unborn awash in amniotic bliss. And what happens when it is born?

It needs to eat, to be dressed and housed and educated. Yet, its birth overburdened a poor family whose mother and sister now walk further and stay away longer to gather firewood and water and to try to grow more food on poor soils. Once born, does this newborn lose the special sacredness it enjoyed while unborn? This burdensome newborn ultimately causes the family to move because the impoverished land cannot grow enough food. The mother and sister turn into beggars. The sister quits school because the money once used to pay for her education goes to support the infant.

The details of this imaginary family's life could continue, but the point is already becoming clear that as a new child increases family expenses, its birth can push a poor family further into poverty. The sister in this family lost her chance to get out of poverty through education. Faith based groups have worked tirelessly all over the globe to help the neediest, but given the wealth of evidence linking women's education to smaller families and therefore to improved standards of living, what maintains the faith in the sacredness of the unborn over the sacredness of the small family where a newborn might have a decent life with hope and opportunity.

Recent research demonstrates the role smaller families played in the economic success of East Asia. In 1950 the average woman in the region had six children, but currently she has two. As life expectancy increased and parents realized that their children had better survival rates, women had fewer offspring leading to a higher ratio of working adults to dependants. Between 1965 and 1990, the working age population rose four times faster than the number of dependants. Parents of smaller families save and invest more in each child's education and health which leads to a healthy, competent adult labor force. The demographic transition which occurred in East Asia has been estimated to have accounted for almost one third of the region's economic growth.

The Arab Region with higher birth rates and higher poverty levels shows a different picture in the 2002 Arab Human Development Report produced by the United Nations. The Report concluded that Arab countries fell so low on all human development indices because the region lacks: 1) Freedom; 2) Modern education; 3) Empowerment of women. A fundamentalist interpretation of Islam in the region is partly to blame according to the report.

A fundamentalist interpretation of Christianity, which has taken hold in some centers of power in the US, is being reflected in policies towards women and toward poverty eradication. The fundamentalist perspective seeks to control women, to curtail freedom, and to replace science based public education with faith based teaching promoting the literal interpretation of the Bible. This orientation turns away from modern science, modern education, and factual knowledge.

A fundamentalist orientation turns faith in a supreme being into the highest form of thinking and sets up a restrictive moral code which falls hardest on women. This viewpoint has forgotten that the highest form of faith is belief in ourselves to make reasoned choices on behalf of our living children and those yet to be born.

Sources: The Economist, (Vol. 365, No. 8302) Dec. 7-13, 2002; State of the World Population 2002, UNFPA

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