Drawing close to the end of this Season of Advent, we must wonder how a young pregnant woman was able to make a journey from her home in Nazareth to Bethlehem. The 90-mile journey in the first century would have taken at least four days, perhaps five. And, of course, apart from a midwife possibly present at the birth of her child, there would have been no medical care. She was fortunate her child survived.
Now we have Afghanistan where women now barred from university studies, including medical schools, will again face astronomical infant and maternal mortality rates. We can expect that more women and babies will die during childbirth. In Pakistan, one in 20 babies die within 28 days of birth; we can only shudder what will happen in Afghanistan.
And, because the Taliban forbids male doctors to care for women patients, what will happen to women, now left without women doctors? What kind of a society must hate its own mothers so much that it does not care about them?
Prayer for the Day
Women know, O Lord, that childbearing is difficult enough,
To not have any medical care during that time;
Facing the prospect of pain, loss, and even death,
Mothers struggle to survive and save their infants.
Grant, O God, that we bring medical care to women in labor,
So women no longer cry at what should be a time of joy.
In the name of the One who survived infancy,
Even Christ Jesus our Lord, Amen.
Thoughts for the Day
If you want to really change a culture to empower women, improve basic hygiene and health care and fight high rates of infant mortality, the answer is simple: educate girls.
- Greg Mortenson, founder Pennies for Peace
No less characteristic in a democracy is social justice. This demands a solution to the frightening indexes of infant mortality, of malnutrition, lack of education and illiteracy.
- Rigoberta Menchu, Guatemalan Mayan leader
While they were there, the time came for her to deliver her child. And she gave birth to her firstborn son and wrapped him in swaddling clothes, and laid him in a manger, because there was no room for them in the inn.
Luke 2: 6-7