One of the women in our Mormon feminist lunch/book group set up a meeting with our Congressman, Jeff Flake. Kay, Holly, and I met with Rep. Flake to discuss international women’s rights issues. Specifically, we were supporting three bills in the Foreign Affairs committee (on which Rep Flake sits). Most of our information came from CARE, an international NGO.
Part of the reason we decided to do this lobbying was because we read Half the Sky for our book group and realized how badly women in the third world are faring. When we met with Rep Flake we asked him if he’d heard of the book, Half the Sky, and he hadn’t. So, I promised to give him my copy when I get it back from my friend. He seemed genuine in his interest to read it.
Holly talked about the MOMS bill, which seeks to address issues of maternal mortatlity rates in third world countries. She told a gripping story of a woman in Africa who, after miraculously getting to a hospital 75 miles from her house, was cared for by inexperienced workers who jumped on her belly to get her baby out. This action ruptured her uterus and without the money, the doctor refused to treat her and after three days of bleeding out, she died.
I didn’t realized that in many countries, 1 of 8 women die in childbirth. It’s incredible. This bill seeks to address the importance of these issues. Of course, with Rep. Flake, and many other legislators, the issues are about funding. “Such sums as necessary” is the phrase used in this bill and that can turn off many a sympathetic Congressman.
Kay discussed a child marriage bill that would require the UN to begin reporting statistics for child marriage, which is any marriage in violation of the country’s own laws. It’s a fairly new bill, without money attached to it, but it could pick up steam if it caught broader attention.
During my few minutes, I discussed the International Violence Against Women Act, which has been introduced every year since 2007.
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