By: Katey Zeh

Last week while attending the United Methodist Church (UMC) General Conference in Tampa, Florida, I was observing a session where delegates from around the globe were discussing the future of our denomination. Like most other mainline denominations, the UMC has struggled with declining membership for decades, but only within its U.S. congregations. Its global membership, especially within countries in Africa, is growing rapidly.

One delegate, a pastor from the Katagana province of the Democratic Republic of Congo, commented on the decline of membership in U.S. churches and in particular, its difficulty with attracting and retaining young people. "The church begins with the pastor's family," he said. He then went on to suggest that the answer to the U.S. decline was for pastors to simply have more and more children.

In response to this suggestion, the room erupted into heartfelt laughter and clapping, perhaps because it was received as a non-serious, comical recommendation. In the midst of serious deliberation, such moments are far too rare. But as an advocate for maternal health in the church, I sat silently, feeling saddened and unsure what upset me more: the comment or the response.

Maternal mortality claims the lives of nearly a thousand women every day. Nearly all of these deaths happen in the developing world, where women lack access to basic health care. They die from preventable things like hemorrhaging and infection, and often from pregnancies that if given the choice, they would have prevented. For many women, giving birth is a life-risking endeavor, one not to be dismissed or joked about in conference rooms, and certainly not by those who seek to bring healing and wholeness to the world.

Mere days after the Congolese pastor spoke, the plenary of nearly 1,000 elected delegates voted to adopt a resolution on maternal health that I drafted. Within it is an affirmation that maternal mortality is a moral tragedy, and that there are many factors that contribute to it, including health and cultural barriers. It calls upon the UMC to take action to support maternal health and family planning through advocacy and direct services.

I never got the opportunity to share my concerns with the delegate who recommended large families, nor do I know if he supported this resolution. As an observer, I did not have a voice at the General Conference. But if I could speak to him today, I would share my vision for what will help save our denomination -- a commitment to alleviating the suffering of the world where no woman dies giving life, and no child grows up motherless.

Published on Huffington Post: http://www.huffingtonpost.com/katey-zeh/maternal-health-united-methodist-church_b_1475648.html

Want to help make the world safer for women and kids?

Join Healthy Families, Healthy Planet to become a maternal health advocate this fall!

Healthy Families, Healthy Planet is now seeking applications for our second annual maternal health advocacy colloquium.  Advocates can choose to attend either of the following dates:

September 26-28, 2012, West Ohio Conference Center, Columbus, OH
October 31-November 2, 2012: Central Texas Conference Center, Fort Worth, TX

Click here to download the application! 

This training will bring together United Methodist advocates from all fifteen of our target Annual Conferences to explore issues concerning women’s health in the developing world. We will learn and work with United Methodist missionaries who work on maternal health, global health experts, and legislative strategists to:

• Learn the statistics and stories of global maternal health;
• Train in effective legislative advocacy from a faith-based perspective;
• Develop education and advocacy strategies on maternal health and international family planning within our communities.

All United Methodists in the continental United States are eligible for participation but we strongly encourage advocates from the following Annual Conferences to apply: 

• California-Pacific
• Central Texas
• Eastern Pennsylvania
• Florida
• Illinois Great Rivers
• Louisiana
• Kansas East
• New York
• Northern Illinois
• Oklahoma/Oklahoma Indian Missionary Conference
• Rocky Mountain
• South Carolina
• Virginia
• West Ohio
• Yellowstone

Concerned about costs? The Healthy Families, Healthy Planet project will cover all costs (housing , transportation, meals, materials, etc) related to attending. Participants will be expected to engage in maternal health advocacy in their local communities and Annual Conferences

Questions? Contact Katey Zeh via email at kzeh@umc-gbcs.org or by phone at 704-604-6770.

Check out this great article from the Kansas East Conference about how a group of women are supporting our work! 

http://www.kansaseast.org/news/detail/749

For consideration at General Conference this April, Healthy Families, Healthy Planet has submitted a resolution calling on the church to support advocacy efforts to improve maternal health and access to family planning. The resolution, entitled “Maternal Health: The Church’s Role,” will be debated and voted on at the 2012 General Conference hosted in Tampa, Florida April 21st- May 4th.

“The United Methodist Church doesn’t currently have an official statement on maternal health,” said Katey Zeh, Coordinator of the Healthy Families, Healthy Planet Project. “Given the tragedy that a woman dies every 90 seconds from maternal complications, it's imperative that the Church stand in solidarity with mothers around the globe.”

This proposed resolution cites the importance of mothers in our biblical tradition and notes that like mothers of the bible such as Rachel (Genesis 35: 16-20) and the wife of Phinehas (1 Samuel 4: 19-20), many women continue to die due to complications in pregnancy and childbirth. The resolution specifically calls on the church to do the following:

1. Support United Methodist projects around the world working on maternal health and family planning.

2. Advocate with policy makers at all levels to improve maternal health through increased access to maternal health and family planning services.

3. Support local health initiatives that expand access to information and services for women's health.

Finally, the resolution also calls upon the General Board of Church & Society (GBCS) to continue placing a programmatic emphasis on education and advocacy for the next quadrennium on maternal health.

As the resolution states: “Women, who are crying out for not only their own survival but also the survival of their families and communities, deserve access to services and care that empower their personal decision-making.  As a global church, we are called to eradicate systems of oppression and marginalization that inhibit women’s health and well-being.”

To find out how you or your Annual Conference can support this resolution, contact Katey Zeh at kzeh@umc-gbcs.org.

On February 18th United Methodist Women of the Central Texas Annual Conference hosted their Annual Charter for Racial Justice Event highlighting issues of maternal health care, domestic violence and immigration and their connections to racism. More than 200 participants attended this event to learn more about these issues and to take action.

The day began with a presentation on maternal health lead by Healthy Families, Healthy Planet Ambassador Julie Warren. Julie serves as Chair of Mission Ministry at Beth United Methodist Church in Winterpock, Chesterfield, VA and as a Registered Nurse has led many international medical mission teams and programs in Africa.   

Julie began her presentation by showing a short video on maternal health and sharing facts with the participants about the impacts of family planning and maternal health globally. “So many of the folks in attendance were shocked to hear that every 90 seconds a woman dies from complications during pregnancy or childbirth” said Cynthia Rives, President of the Central Texas UMW.

As part of her presentation, Julie led the group to create birthing kits to send to mothers in need.  “It was so powerful the way we connected the statistics and the reality of life for women around the world to those concrete objects in the birthing kit,” said Rives.  “Afterwards everyone put the kits on the table and we prayed over them. Not only were we blessing those who would use those kits, but we received blessings from that prayer, part of that blessing is the action we took not to be quiet and safe but to go out and make a difference. “

“In presenting the facts and doing the birthing kits I really wanted to communicate that we all have an opportunity to give voice to these issues,” said Julie Warren. “We aren’t called to be Christians to sit in the back pew and be quiet. We all need to make a difference by supporting programs and legislation that address these issues.”

In addition to making the birthing kits many participants wrote letters to their member of Congress, Representative Kay Granger who chairs the House Subcommittee which appropriates funding for international family planning and maternal health programs. “Every time we come together as United Methodist Women we do some kind of action.  It’s not just about gaining knowledge but what we will do with it to make change in the world,” said Rives. Hosting this event and writing letters to Congress is a good first step but we must and will do more.”

To take action by hosting an event on international family planning and maternal health or organizing a letter writing campaign, contact Katey Zeh at kzeh@umc-gbcs.org.

Prayer vigil planned on federal budget

Ecumenical Advocacy Days March 25-28
By Wayne Rhodes, Editor, Faith in Action

WASHINGTON, D.C. — The United Methodist General Board of Church & Society (GBCS) is involved in presentations during the 9th annual Ecumenical Advocacy Days conference for global peace with justice March 25-28. Theme for this year’s event, which starts Friday and ends with visits to members of Congress on Monday, is "Development, Security & Economic Justice: What's Gender Got to Do with It?"

Besides workshops and speakers on advocacy, time has been allotted on Saturday, March 26, for members of denominations to meet over lunch from 12:30 to 2:30 p.m.

A prayer vigil on Capitol Hill is being planned for noon on Monday. Its focus is to implore Congress not to balance the budget on the backs of women and children. Ecumenical Advocacy Days attendees will receive copies of prayers in advance of the vigil.

Maternal health

Members of GBCS’s staff will facilitate a workshop “Maternal Health & Millennium Development Goal #5: How can the church respond?” on Saturday at 10:45 a.m. to 12:15 p.m. The workshop’s featured presenter is Beatrice Gbanga, medical coordinator for the United Methodist Sierra Leone Conference. GBCS staff members Katey Zeh, coordinator of the agency’s Healthy Families, Healthy Planet initiative, and Linda Bales Todd, director of its Louise & Hugh Moore Population Project, will take prominent roles in the workshop.

United Nations Millennium Development Goal #5 to improve maternal health and reduce maternal mortality by 75% is lagging behind, according to the workshop’s description. This workshop will focus on the barriers to achieving better maternal health worldwide and how churches are responding. Participants will hear maternal health stories from the Global South and learn ways to advocate for maternal health in their congregations and denominations.

Gender, Race & Mass Incarceration

GBCS is co-sponsoring a workshop “Gender, Race & Mass Incarceration” that will be Saturday, 2:45 to 4:15 p.m.

African-American women make up the fastest-growing population in the U.S. prison system, which has grown by 600% in the past 30 years. Unjust sentencing policies combined with racial profiling have essentially created a mass incarceration among African Americans. The workshop will examine mass incarceration's impact, and will highlight injustices the U.S. system imposes on too many women of color.

Presenters Kemba Smith Pradia, the Rev. Sala Nolan Gonzalez and Lorraine Stutzman Amstutz will discuss theological and policy justifications for adopting an alternative model, centering on Restorative Justice. A photographic exhibit, “What Will Happen to Me? When a Parent is In Prison” by Howard Zehr and Amstutz will accompany the workshop.

Gonzales, is minister for Criminal Justice & Human Rights, Justice & Witness Ministries, United Church of Christ. Her portfolio addresses human rights and criminal justice issues, including political imprisonment, the death penalty, youth incarceration, reentry from prison to community, and patterns of systemic injustice. Amstutz is co-director of the Office on Crime & Justice for Mennonite Central Committee. She has co-authored a curriculum “Victim Offender Conferencing in Pennsylvania’s Juvenile Justice System,” The Little Book of Restorative Discipline for Schools, and is author of The Little Book of Victim Offender Conferencing.

Pradia received nationwide attention when President Clinton granted her clemency after serving 6.5 years of a 24.5-year sentence as a first-time, non-violent drug offender. Her story has been featured on CNN, Nightline, Court TV, The Early Morning Show and Donahue. She also has been featured in publications such as The Washington Post, The New York Times, Glamour, andPeople.

Biblical witness and shared traditions

More than 700 persons of faith from across the country will visit Capitol Hill for Ecumenical Advocacy Days. Policy makers, expert speakers and representatives from global regions will join church leaders and grassroots activists will lift up vital issues of U.S. and global economic justice, safety and security, and sustainable development.

Ecumenical Advocacy Days is a movement of Christian denominations and more than 40 recognized partners and allies. It is grounded in biblical witness and shared traditions of justice, peace and the integrity of creation. Its goal, through worship, theological reflection and opportunities for learning and witness, is to strengthen the Christian voice of citizens mobilized for advocacy on a wide variety of U.S. domestic and international policy issues.

Registration and more information, such as other speakers and schedule of events, is at Ecumenical Advocacy Days. Student scholarships are available.

Date: 3/9/2011 

©2011

Your help is needed today! Rep. Latta (R-OH) has proposed an amendment that would eliminate all international family planning funding from the 2011 budget. This extreme measure would would be devastating to the health of women, children, and families around the world. Family planning is a critical, cost-effective health intervention that saves the lives of women and young children.

Take Action!

The House of Representatives is expected to vote on this amendment this week. Contact your representative today to oppose this extreme amendment. The House of Representatives Switchboard number is 202-224-3121.

Here's what to say:

• Family planning saves lives. This cut would result in 12,000 more maternal deaths and 87,000 more infant deaths.
• Family planning is cost-effective. It costs about $2/year to provide a woman with family planning, but the direct and indirect benefits are countless. Women's economic contributions are critical for economic stability in a country.
• Family planning is an issue people of faith care about. The United Methodist Church has an historic, strong stance in support of women's health and family planning.

Please share this information with your congregations and networks. Contact Healthy Families, Healthy Planet coordinator Katey Zeh (kateyzeh@gmail.com) with any questions.

Healthy Families, Healthy Planet will be hosting a workshop on maternal health at the 9th annual Ecumenical Advocacy Days (EAD), which will take place in Washington, DC on March 25-28, 2011. Sponsored by the ecumenical Christian community, EAD brings advocates together to mobilize for action on Capitol Hill. The theme of this year's conference is Development, Security & Economic Justice: What’s Gender Got to Do with It?

Maternal health is crucial component of development. Motherhood is dangerous in the developing world, where every 90 seconds a woman dies of complications during pregnancy or childbirth. That's nearly a thousand women dying every single day. But these deaths are not inevitable. Most of them could be prevented if all women had access to comprehensive medical care and family planning services. Millennium Development Goal #5—to improve maternal health and reduce maternal mortality by 75%—is lagging behind. Both the immediate and rippling effects of these deaths impact not only the health of families, but also the economic health of communities that lose the contributions of these women.

Katey Zeh, coordinator of Healthy Families, Healthy Planet, and Linda Bales Todd, director of the Louise & Hugh Moore Population Project for the General Board of Church & Society, will co-lead the workshop,"Maternal Health and Millennium Development Goal 5: How Can the Church Respond?" The focus will be on identifying the barriers to achieving better maternal health worldwide and how churches are responding. Participants will hear maternal health stories from the Global South and learn ways to advocate for maternal health in their congregations and denominations.

To learn more about Ecumenical Advocacy Days and to register, please visit the EAD website.

The Pulitzer Center on Crisis Reporting, a nonprofit that sponsors and produces award-winning international journalism, launched a new interactive site focused on maternal mortality issues, Dying for Life. The Center is partnering with the writers' site Helium to host a writing contest about maternal health. The deadline for the Global Maternal Health Writing Contest is Thursday June 24. The Pulitzer Center Global Issues/Citizen Voices Award in this contest will be announced on Wednesday July 7.

Healthy Mothers, Healthy Families, Healthy Planet

Katey Zeh

May 5, 2010

General Board of Church & Society

A reading from the Gospel of John 10:10: “I have come that they may have life, and have it abundantly.”

“These are free?!” I heard this hundreds of times last week at the United Methodist Women’s Assembly. Literally thousands of women walked by my booth in the exhibit hall, some who merely wanted a piece of free candy or to add a Healthy Families, Healthy Planet button to their pin collection. They were very welcome to do so. Some genuinely wanted to talk about the state of the world for mothers. But many of them were there for these—our original “Healthy Mother’s Day cards,” an idea of mine that Michelle helped make a truly beautiful reality. Women would admire one of the cards, and ask “How much is this?” I was delighted to tell them that there was no charge and to please take one. They were shocked! Some would ask if they could make a donation, and I would say, ‘Would you write your member of Congress about the importance of family planning?”

But not everyone was so eager to take a card. Many of the women would say sadly, “But I don’t have a mother.” My general response was to ask them to think more broadly—did they have daughters, daughters-in-law, sisters, church members? “Oh yes, I think I’ll take one.” It was such fun, handing out these beautiful cards and thinking that on this Mother’s Day women all over the country will be getting “Healthy Mother’s Day” cards and perhaps for just a moment will be thinking of women for whom it is not a safe, healthy world to be a mother.

But that response haunted me, “I don’t have a mother.” I heard this over and over, some women who clearly lost their mom years ago. But for others the wound was fresh. It pained them to say it. I felt their abandonment, their deep sense of loss, even their anger. Even though I’ve been working on the issue of maternal mortality for months, it had not struck me in this deep way until then. I began to question the cards. Were they insensitive? These women were here for joy, and here I was, reminding them of what they didn’t have.

In the face of pain, the impulse to flee is a strong one, isn’t it? I hated the idea that something as beautiful as this card could cause so much pain. And rather than experience the discomfort of meeting these women in their grief, there was part of me that really wanted to get rid of the source of it.

I don’t have a mother. More than 1 million children this year will join that wailing chorus of the motherless. Their mothers will die giving birth, usually from preventable causes, and these children will have to face the harsh reality of this cruel world without her protection and love, for many with no memory of her at all.

“Sometimes I feel like a motherless child.” That song kept running through my head.

I remember the first time I heard the image of God as a Mother. It made me uncomfortable. Even though I was a full-blown feminist at that point, I couldn’t get past the masculine language for God. It wasn’t until I began reading the medieval mystic Julian of Norwich and her understanding of Christ as mother that it began to really resonate with me. The more I thought about it, the more sense it made. What more beautifully embodies the sacrament of the Eucharist, of Christ’s offering of himself, than of a mother giving birth, her giving of her blood to bring new life? Of a mother nursing her infant, sharing of her own body to nourish and protect that life? “Take and eat, this is my body, given for you.”

We ought to be in awe of mothers. Few things in this world are as sacred as this.

In my thinking about maternal health and the church, I initially had trouble with connecting it biblically, perhaps because I was looking for something more literal. Mothers in the bible are often nameless and for the most part disregarded, known only for the men whom they gave birth to. But as I began to think of women, how they are struggling to survive, how no matter where they live, they have the same desires for healthy lives for their families and themselves, that they weren’t simply wombs that need tending to, I thought of Jesus talking about abundant life. Jesus did not come only so we could survive, but that we might thrive, flourish, bloom. God wants more for this world than families who can remain alive; God’s desire is for families that can sustain themselves and grow and persevere. To have abundant lives.

The motherless women I encountered last week had something profound to show me. Through their own pain and loss, they perhaps are the ones who can truly identify with the motherless children of the world. They are the ones who can value and honor mothers in a way that I cannot. This Mother’s Day may we remember the motherless children, old and young, privileged and marginalized. And let us give thanks and pray to the God who mothers us all for a world full of healthy mothers, healthy families, and a healthy planet. Amen.