Mr. Speaker, I rise in support of H. Res. 1022, as amended and presented to the House today. 

    Mr. Speaker, reducing maternal and child mortality and providing quality health care and nutrition to ensure the well-being of both mother and baby here and abroad, has been a top legislative priority for me throughout my 28 years as a Member of Congress. 

    All loss of life is tragic, especially when it is preventable. When a mother dies, the loss, the heartache is compounded by the deleterious impact on her children, on families and on the community. 

    As H. Res. 1022 points out, each year, more than a million children are left motherless and, as a consequence, are vulnerable. In many places, young girls are pulled from school and required to fill their lost mother's role in the home, cutting short their abilities to pursue an education.
And the evidence suggests that newborns whose mothers die of any cause are 3 times to 10 times more likely to die within the first 2 years than those whose mothers survive.
 
    What is most unfortunate and thereby, should be unacceptable, is the fact that most maternal deaths are avoidable. With proper prenatal care and maternal health care, sanitary conditions for delivery, and available lifesaving emergency interventions, essential obstetrical services, these lives need not be lost. Even in our own country maternal mortality, although rarer than in the developing world, occurs. No loss of life is acceptable.
 
    Mr. Speaker, hemorrhaging and blood loss are the top cause of maternal mortality and are of grave concern. During an African subcommittee hearing that I chaired during the previous Congress which concerned itself with safe blood, we heard from Dr. Neelam Dhingra, of the World Health Organization. Dr. Dhingra informed us that the most common cause of maternal death in sub-Saharan Africa is severe bleeding, which can take the life of even a healthy woman within 2 hours, if not properly and immediately treated. She gave us the astounding statistic that in Africa, severe bleeding during delivery, or after childbirth, contributes to up to 44 percent of maternal deaths, many of which could be prevented simply through access to safe blood.
 
    Sufficient quantity and quality of immediately available and usable blood must become the norm and not the exception. 

    And I want to applaud the efforts of Chaka Fattah who has pushed very hard over the years to try to grow the amount, the quality and the quantity of blood in Africa. And USAID is addressing this in a number of programs, including the PEPFAR program. 

    Women should not die from blood loss, simply due to lack of access to basic interventions like safe blood. Support of this resolution today puts us on record as focusing on these kinds of interventions.
 
    Mr. Speaker, one severe disfiguring disability that occurs in childbirth is obstetric fistula. Fistula can be treated and repaired through a relatively minor surgical procedure that costs, on average, $150 per surgery.
 
    I saw that firsthand, Mr. Speaker, on a trip several years back to Addis Ababa, where there is this famous hospital which has now grown and has satellites, and obviously has inspired other similar hospitals that treat the women who make it to them, and they're the lucky ones. I saw many of the women who were waiting in lines, who were incontinent, who were very sorrowful about their conditions but very hope-filled, knowing it was a matter of when and not if they would get this great surgery.
 
    Still, large numbers of women, an estimated 2 million, endure the tremendous pain and numbing isolation that comes from being the walking wounded, incontinent and ostracized, and not able to get to hospitals like that which is in Addis. With just a small investment of health care dollars, the lives of these women could be dramatically changed.
 
    In 2005, I would just point out, I sponsored an amendment that passed on this floor to allocate $12.5 million dollars to establish 12 centers to provide treatment and surgery that would have allowed thousands of women to be physically cured and emotionally healed from fistula, preventing disease, death, and allowing them to return to normal life.
 
    The amendment authorized funding for preventive measures as well, such as providing skilled birth attendants who can identify an obstructed delivery early and prevent an obstetric fistula from occurring in the fist place. Unfortunately, the underlying legislation made it over to the Senate, but died.
 
    However, I did ask the Bush administration, namely Dr. Kent Hill, USAID Assistant Administrator for Global Health, to initiate administratively a robust fistula program, which I'm happy to say he did wholeheartedly with a great deal of skill and compassion. I am happy to report that from 2004 to 2007, USAID has allocated more than $20 million for fistula prevention and treatment. In 2008 that amount will jump to $30 million, a great start but still not enough.
 
    Nevertheless, more than 3,500 women have had life-changing fistula repair through this program, not to mention the cases prevented through proper obstetric care.
 
    Helping mothers and helping their babies, Mr. Speaker, goes hand in hand. There is no dichotomy. When women receive proper prenatal care they are less likely to die in childbirth, and when unborn babies are healthy in the womb they emerge as healthier, stronger newborns.
 
    I am pleased that the resolution before us today does not endorse in any way whatsoever the cruel ideology that pits women against their babies by suggesting abortion as a means of combating maternal mortality. Women and their babies deserve better than abortion, and their health and well-being is intrinsically linked.
 
    Unfortunately, some abortion activists in recent years have attempted to exploit the tragedy of maternal mortality as a vehicle for their promotion of abortion.
 
    On one trip to Uganda, Mr. Speaker, I met with the head of the Minister of Gender, and we talked about this problem of maternal mortality. And she said, what African women want is essential obstetrical services, not the demise of their unborn babies.
 
    And so I am pleased that the resolution before us does not embrace abortion and, instead, properly links maternal health care and child survival to survival of all children, including the fragile and the vulnerable unborn child.
 
    Birth is not the beginning of life, Mr. Speaker. It is merely an event in the baby's life that began at the precise moment of fertilization. Life is a continuum with many, many stages. Human rights should be respected from womb to tomb. We need to recognize this biological fact in policy, funding and programming, and treat both mother and baby, unborn baby as well, as two patients in need of respect, love and tangible assistance. We need to affirm them both.
 
    Mr. Speaker, in 1985, I sponsored the Child Survival Fund Amendment that doubled funding to $50 million, and it was adopted into law. The legislation financed global vaccinations, oral rehydration therapy. I think many Members will be a little bit shocked to learn that a leading cause of child death is from diarrheal dehydration and the problems that result from that, while oral rehydration therapy can prevent it simply by getting fluids into that young child. It also focuses on growth monitoring and breast feeding. So I'm happy to say that the resolution also speaks to that issue very, very soundly.

    UNICEF recognizes that unborn children and newborn children require care and nurturing, stating, and I quote, ``significant improvement in early neonatal period will depend on essential interventions for the mother and babies before, during and immediately after birth. 

    According to the latest estimates for 2000 to 2006, at present in the developing world, one-quarter of pregnant women do not receive even a single visit from a skilled health professional, doctor, nurse, or midwife, and only 59 percent of births take place with the assistance of a skilled attendant, and just over half take place in a health facility. That has to be addressed.
 
    And yet the care for the mother and unborn child cannot be restricted to medical conditions and consultations, I should say, as important as they are. For example, in its child survival series, the Lancet identified fetal malnutrition and lower maternal body mass index as likely factors in neo-natal mortality rates and fetal-growth retardation. Just as undernutrition is the underlying cause of a substantial percentage of all child deaths, the mother's nutritional status has a direct bearing on the unborn child's development and the ability to survive, and of course, on her life as well.
 
    While visiting refugee camps in Sudan in the Darfur region, Mr. Speaker, I asked a group of women what is it that they required most, and I asked this at each and every camp, from the Muchar-Kama camp, all of the camps that I visited, they were unanimous. They wanted access to nutritious food so that these nursing mothers could continue to meet the needs of their infants. It was all about the two working together.
 
    If we are to address child and maternal deaths and go even further to ensure the healthy development of the baby through adolescence and the long-term health of the mother, the baby and the mother must be provided adequate nutrition and health care from the earliest stages of life prior to birth.
 
    In sum, the lack of prenatal care, the lack of adequate nutrition during pregnancy, the lack of sterile birthing environments, the lack of clean blood, and the lack of access to essential obstetrical services all contribute to the deaths of women and children. We must do more to save the lives of both, and the Child Survival and Maternal Mortality Initiatives must recognize, embrace, protect, and assist both women and their children, both born and unborn, from all threats including disease, hunger, trauma, and violence.