Saving Mothers

Nicholas Kristof has an excellent column up today about using Mother's Day as an occasion to also help mothers around the world.

From the New York Times...

Let’s celebrate Mother’s Day with all the flowers and brunches we can muster. But let’s also think about moving the apostrophe so that it becomes not just Mother’s Day, honoring a single mother, but Mothers’ Day — an occasion to try to help other mothers around the globe as well.

Just the money that Americans will spend on Mother’s Day greeting cards for today — about $670 million — would save the lives of many thousands of women. Many organizations do wonderful work in this area, from the giants like CARE and Save the Children to the tiny Edna Maternity Hospital in Somaliland. Women Deliver and the White Ribbon Alliance for Safe Motherhood do important advocacy work. And the Fistula Foundation and Worldwide Fistula Fund help women who have obstetric fistulas.

So if one way to mark Mothers’ Day is to buy flowers for that special mom, another is to make this a safer planet for moms in general.

Against all odds, the work that Edna Adan Ismail is doing in Somaliland is amazing. If you're inspired to "make this a safer place for moms in general" consider a contribution to Edna Maternity Hospital.