No Woman No Cry

No Woman No Cry

a film review by SQUAT blogger Chantal Tapé

I first learned about the documentary No Woman, No Cry from my mother. She described it as a film about birth (something I might like) and told me she had seen an interview with the filmmaker on Oprah. Self-described birth geek that I am, I made a mental note to look into it. What my mother failed to mention is that the hour-long look at the state of maternal health across the globe was directed by none other than former supermodel Christy Turlington Burns. With this film, Turlington attempts to raise awareness about the plight of mothers around the world, including here in the United States. For many women, birth can be a dangerous and often life-threatening experience. The film provides a baffling statistic: A woman dies every 90 seconds from pregnancy complications. 90% of these deaths are preventable.ⁱ

Christy begins the film with her own birth story. During the birth of her second child, Christy suffered from postpartum hemorrhage, which she would later learn is the leading cause of maternal death worldwide. Thanks to an experienced and supportive birth team, Christy survived and had a healthy baby girl. But what if her circumstances had been different? Would the outcome have been different had she been born in a rural village in Tanzania? Or, better yet, if she had been an uninsured, low-income black or Latina woman living in this country? 

Filmmaker Christy Turlington Burns

I must admit that it was not without a degree of skepticism that I sat down to watch this documentary. As a student of anthropology, I'm all too familiar with the many books and films made by well-meaning (but often privileged and often white) folks who set out to open our collective eyes to the atrocities that occur in places like Africa and the Middle East. Many of these authors fail to recognize and understand the tremendous inequalities that people face in these countries and end up recreating the very racist, colonialist, patriarchal discourses that they're trying to change. Furthermore, there is an assumption in many international development circles that the problem is always “over there.” I appreciated this film's consciousness of race and class as two factors that greatly impact a woman's access to reproductive health care. It is no coincidence that African American women, for example, are almost four times more likely to die of pregnancy complications than white women.ⁱⁱ

While most of the film's focus is on the high rate of maternal mortality in the so-called “developing” world, Turlington is wise to remind us that the US itself has a shockingly high maternal mortality rate, making us somewhere around 50^th in a ranking of maternal mortality rates across the world. This means that it is safer to give birth in 49 other countries, none of which spend nearly as much on maternal health as we do! In the film, Turlington visits a midwife who runs a clinic in Central Florida that serves mainly low-income and uninsured women. Many of these women are without access to prenatal care. Statistically, they are at the highest risk for pregnancy complications that may result in death. 

The stories Turlington shares in No Woman, No Cry bring to life the extraordinary struggles that pregnant women face in many parts of the world. There is Janet, the young mother living in a village in Tanzania, who walks 5 miles to the nearest clinic, which is staffed by a single midwife, a handful of nurses, and only the occasional doctor. Janet's labor is not progressing, although she complains of worsening pain. When it becomes clear that the small clinic is not equipped to care for her, the midwife recommends that Janet be seen at the nearest hospital. She hasn't eaten in days, has no money, no food, and no transportation to get her there. At the nurses' request, Turlington and her crew intervene. They agree to pay for a van (the equivalent of $30 US dollars, which we are told is more than Janet's family makes in a month) to transport her to the hospital. Although she is dehydrated and malnourished, Janet successfully delivers a healthy baby. It is clear, though, that without the help of Turlington and her crew, mother and baby would have probably died.

On a more hopeful note, perhaps the most inspiring (and my favorite) scenes in this film are of Linda, an OB/GYN in Guatemala. Linda travels around the country training community health workers, many of whom have never received formal medical training. She also provides care to women suffering from complications due to unsafe (illegal) abortions. When speaking about the state of maternal health in her country and around the world, Linda connects women's lack of access to quality reproductive health care to the paternalism of the medical system. Women are not presented with choices, choices are made for them. She also laments the general lack of concern for women's lives in her country. Women are expected to be mothers and therefore, she worries, the general public has become desensitized to maternal mortality. If a woman dies during childbirth, she becomes something of a hero, a martyr who has died fulfilling her duty. Perhaps because she is a physician, Linda is the only person in the film to connect lack of access to contraception and other family planning resources to the poor health outcomes that many women face.

While I enjoyed this film on the whole, I think Turlington could have devoted more time to a discussion of what viewers can do to change the current system, which is obviously failing so many vulnerable women. I was glad to see, however, that a link was made between access to safe abortion and maternal mortality. It reminds me of a statistic I read the other day that was put out by the Guttmacher Institute. Their research shows that 6 out of 10 women who have abortions in the US are already mothers.ⁱⁱⁱ While I believe that all women deserve access to safe and affordable abortion services regardless of whether they already have kids, this statistic seems like a good one to throw back at the anti-choice movement that is so vehemently attacking women's rights these days. Since they care so much about mothers and so-called family values, we ought to remind them that if abortion were to become illegal in this country, it is mostly mothers and families who would suffer. After all, I think we all know by now that making abortion a crime doesn't make it go away. It merely drives it underground, where women in need can no longer demand safety.

This film has given me a lot to think about and probably more questions than answers. I applaud Christy Turlington Burns, who is at the end of the day a mother and a woman of tremendous power and privilege, for recognizing that, for most mothers in this world, pregnancy is yet another obstacle to their survival. I recommend that you watch this film and invite you to comment with your own ideas on what we can do to put maternal health--and women's health--back at the top of the world's agenda. There is so much to be done.

For film trailers and a list of screenings in person and on tv, visit the Every Mother Counts web site. 

Chantal Tapé is a self-described birth geek, doula, and soon-to-be-midwife. She currently resides in the smallest state, where she can be found drinking beer with other hairy feminists. In her free time, she also enjoys cake-baking, dance parties, and talking about abortion.

iEvery Mother Counts. http://www.everymothercounts.org/issue

iiAmnesty International, “Maternal Health in the U.S.” http://www.amnestyusa.org/demand-dignity/maternal-health-is-a-human-right/the-united-states/page.do?id=1351091

iii“Abortion in the United States” Guttmacher Institute. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rY-bQ6UzhNI&feature=player_embedded#at=44