Male and Female He Created Them ...

Nepal has one of the highest maternal mortality rates in the world. Each year, 54 out of every 10,000 pregnant women in the country die in childbirth or from complications stemming from birth. Pregnant women fair better in Bangeladesh, Papau New Guinea, Ghana, and even Haiti. Grim standings, to be sure.

Roughly translated, that's 6,000 women each year whose lives are cut short just as they are entering what is to be one of the most beautiful seasons of life for a woman: motherhood. Instead of memorizing their newborn's pursed bow lips, or counting tiny fingers and toes, these women suffer through undeliverable breech labors, contract septic infections, or bleed to death on the dirt floor of an outdoor cow shed.


While much of the blame can be laid upon the country's dismal economic situation, a look into the Hindu-dominated practices surrounding birth gives more insight into why having babies is such dangerous business in Nepal. In villages, elders and religious leaders often control who has access to health care. Trained birth attendants are a rarity, since the role is seen as one of low-caste standing. Because the birth process is thought to potentially bring bad luck upon men and livestock, it takes place in the shed normally reserved for housing cattle.  (See this photo montage for more.)

This is not the safest way to have a baby.


Sadly, the direness of women's issues in Nepal extends beyond their birth experiences. The simple biological act of menstruation sets them up for exclusion and derision thanks to an ancient myth:

In Far-Western and Mid-Western Nepal, families isolate women from the home during menstruation and also immediately after childbirth. Advocate Poonam Chand says this is because various religious books have deemed menstruation and pregnancy to be sins, and chaupadi [ritual seclusion] is the punishment. (GPI: click here for full story)

Women are hidden away, ostracized, and neglected during their monthly cycle thanks to a Hindu belief. Condemned to a freezing hut for seven days, many women grow ill or even die each year from exposure.






Reading these facts make the smiles of the girls at Abba House that much more precious. Safe from enslavement to myriad Hindu gods, unfettered by the oppression of superstition and fear, these girls are being raised with the joy and freedom of Christianity. They are learning that they, too, are fearfully and wonderfully made in God's own image. They are told daily that children are a gift, that they are as entitled to the gift of salvation as any man or boy, and that the Lord who set the stars in the sky cares about their needs, large and small.


Quite a different perspective, isn't it?