From Your (Wo)manInWashington blog MOTHERS changing the conversation @ www.MothersOughtToHaveEqualRights.org MOTHERS member Jennifer Minear picked up the Sunday paper two weeks ago and received an unexpected jolt from an article on parenting styles and their alleged consequences. She felt a lot...

I said to the kids, “You’re building the perfect teacher. Give me a word that describes this person.”

All over the world, women are still dying in childbirth. A woman dies every single minute. In the majority of countries it is usually due to the absence of good medical support. In the USA, a staggering number of women still deliver in the ER without having received any pre-natal care. There is also a disturbing trend that too much technology and interference is leading to creeping maternal mortality rates in America. Christy Turlington's documentary, No Woman No Cry raises some of the issues. Women need to be heard. To be heard requires understanding and knowledge. In this, women in America are very much like their sisters in Bangladesh, Tanzania and Guatemala, the locations of Turlington's stories.

About a decade ago I received a distraught call from my high school friend, Mark, telling me that his son had just been diagnosed with cancer at his one year old well child visit with the pediatrician. A decade later, he called to say that his son’s life had been saved by this checkup. He also...