Women’s Health Is Under Threat Everywhere

Women’s Health Is Under Threat Everywhere
I am haunted by the face of an 11-year-old Kenyan girl.

Terry McGovern
07/21/2017

The Trump Administration is set on undoing public health progress with policies that restrict sexual and reproductive health and rights in the U.S. and around the world.

I am haunted by the face of an 11-year-old Kenyan girl. Her beautiful, clouded eyes, and her searching, troubled expression. Early in July, I listened as her mother spoke haltingly of the family member who raped her daughter. She shook her head, saying, “I believe God is good. I should forgive him.”

All I could think about was how a pregnancy could have killed the girl and made her yet another maternal mortality statistic. There is a crisis of pregnancy-related maternal mortality in Kenya, and adolescent girls bear the brunt. Thankfully, this girl and her mother were able to get counseling at one of the country’s only gender-based violence centers. Sometime later she was able to end her pregnancy.

Continued at source: Huffington Post: http://www.huffingtonpost.com/entry/womens-health-is-under-threat-everywhere_us_597211aee4b00e4363df029e