Even if there were to be peace for ever more, I would find ANZAC Day difficult. We revere the men who died in battle, but where is the reverence for the women who died in childbirth? There is none, because after all, giving birth is just ordinary old women’s work, part of the quotidian round. Who cares that so many women have suffered in giving birth, so many have died, along with their babies, leaving young children behind them? No one, it seems, honours those who die in giving life. We only honour those who die in the battle to give death.
The whole post is here, and there has been a long dicussion about it. But perhaps THM readers would like to chime in on this particular issue here.
The F-word has a report about a project focusing on women who die in childbirth, now, in the 21st century, because they do not have decent healthcare.
5 comments:
Not quite "on topic" but what about all the civilians that die when caught up in wars. My worst nightmare - giving birth in a war zone.
Families and friends remember the women and children who've died giving birth or being born.
A friend from postgrad days tells me when we see each other of the progress of the rose I brought to her, on behalf of our department, when she and her husband lost their first child seven years ago. My mother and I remember my great-grandfather's second wife, who died at thirty-five, after giving birth to her fifth child.
I'd hazard that it's because such memories are family-generated and family-held that they don't make it into the public memorial. They stay in the private, domestic sphere, a different kind of unspeakable, and don't attach easily to other wider social and cultural movements: nation building, for example, or, to throw back, imperialism.
You can believe, however, that I would parade at dawn for lost mothers and children.
Great point Deborah. Particularly as throughout history women haven't had a lot of choices around whether or not to experience childbirth. Kind of like a perennial draft for the XXers.
Harvestbird, that was such a lovely thing for your department to do. It's all too easy to react to the stillbirth or early death of a baby with shocked silence.
The stories that get passed from woman to woman are fascinating, and often so sad. I have some in my own family too. They would make you weep.
Deborah, I remember it was the two administrators who organised it, one a younger woman, one older. The process of signing the card gave rise to other staff, men and women, sharing stories of children lost at birth. It made me think, again, how common it is, and how terribly sad.
More recently I ran into my old friend at a wedding with her newborn son. The first thing she did was talk about him in relation to his sister, which was a lovely thing.
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