The state of affairs at the Victoria Jubilee Hospital as reported in your newspaper recently in which mostly poor Jamaican women bring their children into the world is unacceptable.

It seems ironic to me that we spend a lot of time speaking about social intervention, getting the names of fathers of our children on birth certificates and the quality (or lack thereof) of early-childhood education.

Yet, as important as these are, we are not overly concerned with the inhumane treatment meted out to women in labour who are forced to share a bed during a most personal and painful experience, such as childbirth, because they are poor.

I am particularly incensed that the reports of a mother whose child fell to the ground as she was forced to deliver her baby in a standing position have largely been ignored and have certainly not spurred the commentary that those in charge of the affairs of the nation have provided on the Jamaica Urban Transit Company (JUTC), for example.

The state of primitiveness that we experience in the island's birthing centres is a greater source of scandal on the name of Jamaica than the alleged continued corruption at the JUTC.

Silence of women

In patriarchal societies such as Jamaica, the plight of poor, black women is often ignored.

While this is unacceptable, we struggle with it as a consistent feature of the battles women face.

I am most unimpressed, however, by the silence of the female parliamentarians (in both houses and on both sides), especially on the eve of the debate on the Offences Against the Person Act. Good God!

We can throw ourselves into psychological dribble drabble and turmoil on the thought of a woman utilising her right to seek an abortion. But for the child to be born in an injurious life-threatening state-run institution, there is silence.

A joint bipartisan outcry in support of poor, black Jamaican women would be an excellent example of the so-called progressive agenda for national development that Portia Simpson Miller talks about.

If we are forced to accept the silence of male parliamentarians on this issue, the female parliamentarians are seemingly reckless in continuing to look the other way.

I am, etc.,

ANTONIA CAMPBELL

antoniacampbell@live.com