In global health, people frequently talk about “entry points” where people using one service can be reached by providers of other services (such as providing family planning services to women who have just given birth). Here’s a link to a panel discussion at Woodrow Wilson Center during which I argue that there these can also be “exit points” – if women are mistreated and disrespected during maternity care, their impression of health care providers in general may be negatively affected. We need to integrate services to meet the needs of clients, but also must be attentive to their human rights.

Written with Bergen Cooper, Senior Policy Research Associate, Center for Health and Gender Equity. Original post in RH Reality Check, April 10, 2015

It has become all too clear lately that to be pregnant, to be in labor, or to birth a child is to put oneself at the mercy of larger powers—powers that sometimes seem unconvinced of women’s humanity. Anti-choice politicians are often the most egregious in leaving out any trace of women’s agency from their rhetoric around pregnancy and abortion. But now we are increasingly seeing evidence that some health-care providers, both in the United States and globally, tend to also reproduce the persistent narrative that girls and women relinquish their human rights when they conceive. Beginning last year, advocates launched the International Day for Maternal Health and Rights on April 11 to ensure that women’s rights in pregnancy, labor, and childbirth become an international priority, including among health providers and politicians.

For more, see full post here.