Pragya Parmita
Staff Writer
Voices for Planned Parenthood (VOX), an on-campus advocacy group that strives to educate students on the usefulness of Planned Parenthood and increase support for the organization, hosted a film screening of Christy Turlington’s “No Woman No Cry,” a documentary focused on the risks surrounding pregnancies in various parts of the world.
The film focuses on four at-risk pregnant women, all in different parts of the world and in varying situations. The film begins with the story of a pregnant woman in a remote Maasai tribe in Tanzania whose delivery is shrouded with complications. Unable to give birth in her home village, the woman has no choice but to pay more than the family’s entire monthly income for a van to take her to a hospital an hour away. She arrives at the hospital only to find that the hospital does not have adequate equipment for her condition.
The film then returns to the United States to point out that such difficulties are not always so foreign. It focuses on the extremely high health care bills for those without insurance or for those whose insurance does not cover pregnancies and pre-natal care. If a woman without health insurance were to have a C-section, it would cost her between $15,000 and $20,000—a price tag that does not even cover sufficient pre-natal care.
The film juxtaposes the absence of health care facilities in Tanzanian villages with the lack of affordability of many health care facilities in America. It then moves on to present a slum in Bangladesh, where women are scared even to give birth in a hospital because of the disastrous stories surrounding these facilities.
It also discusses a post-abortion care ward in Guatemala, a country with very strict anti-abortion laws. Women in Guatemala risk death with unsafe abortions, and even after experiencing complications, are often too afraid to admit to the abortion.
The film estimates 65,000 risky abortions per year. World Health Organization also estimates that 1,000 women die in childbirth across the world everyday. “No Woman No Cry” increases awareness of such horrific realities of our world in a persistent hope for change.