This, in the BMJ was a shocker. One in sixteen women in Africa die from complications of pregnancy and childbirth. Compared to one in 4 600 in the United Kingdom (which still puts it above a whole bunch of other causes of death that are talked about more). Which means that, taking the UN projection of 819 million for 2000 (which I gather is now considered high, because of AIDS), assuming about half of them are women, still works out to 25 million women by my reckoning. 25 million women.

This, from The Lancet only evoked a sigh of requited pessimism. The Bush administration’s anti-abortion policies may well result in strings being attached to AIDS prevention funding in developing countries that may decrease its accessibility by the very people who need it most. As Marge Piercy puts in in her poem on the Iraq situation “we dote on embryos … but people, who needs them?” It’s not her best poem, too declarative, but contains one striking internal rhyme. I am rereading a fourth or fifth hand (found in a charity store for 50c) copy of her novel Vida, a portrait of an American radical activist after years living underground, wanted for bombings and acts of sabotage against institutions and corporations, a frank and sympathetic portrait of her life, politics, relationships and times; I wonder if it would be published today? For a country that takes freedom speech as a near-religious tenet, America seems oddly unable to find undamaging forms of settling its internal strife. Freedom of speech seems to be freedom to be abusive. Never more evident in the arguments over Iraq.