DID YOU KNOW?
DID YOU KNOW?
Women Are Dying in
Childbirth Far More
Often in the U.S., Even
as Other Countries
Make Pregnancy Safer
Governments
Across the
Globe

The U.S. maternal mortality rate is
rising, while it’s falling elsewhere
across the developed world. Seri-
ous injuries and complications are needlessly
even more widespread with shockingly little
attention being paid.
“Each year, over 600 women in the U.S. die
from pregnancy-related causes, and over
65,000 experience life-threatening complica-
tions or severe maternal morbidity,” Eliza-
beth Dawes Gay reported, covering an April 2016 congressional briefing organized by
Women’s Policy Inc. “The average national rate of maternal mortality has increased from
12 per 100,000 live births in 1998 to 15.9 in 2012, after peaking at 17.8 in 2011.”
“The U.S. is the only nation in the developed world with a rising maternal mortality
rate,” then-U.S. Rep. Lois Capps (D-Calif.) stated at the meeting.
“Inadequate health care in rural areas and racial disparities are drivers of this mater-
nal health crisis,” Project Censored summarized. “Nationally, African-American women
are three to four times more likely than white women to die from pregnancy-related
causes, with rates even higher in parts of the U.S. that Gay characterized as ‘pockets of
neglect,’ such as Georgia, where the 2011 maternal mortality rate of 28.7 per 100,000 live
births was nearly double the national average.”
DID YOU KNOW?
The Democratic
National Committee
Says It Can Legally Pick
Whomever It Wants as
the Presidential Nominee

A key story about 2016 election has mostly been ignored by the media—a class
action lawsuit alleging that the Democratic National Committee broke legally
binding neutrality agreements in the Democratic primaries by strategizing to
make Hillary Clinton the nominee before a single vote was cast.
The lawsuit was fi led against the DNC and its former chairwoman, Debbie Wasserman
Schultz, in June 2016 by Beck & Lee, a Miami law fi rm, on behalf of supporters of Bernie
Sanders. A hearing was held on the suit in April 2017 in which DNC lawyers argued that
neutrality was not actually required and that the court had no jurisdiction to assess neu-
tral treatment.
As Michael Sainato reported for The Observer, DNC attorneys claimed that Article V,
Section 4 of the committee’s charter—which instructs the DNC chair and staff to ensure
neutrality in the Democratic presidential primaries—is actually “a discretionary rule”
that the committee “didn’t need to adopt to begin with.” In addition, DNC attorney Bruce
Spiva later said it was within the committee’s rights to “go into back rooms like they used
to and smoke cigars and pick the candidate that way.”

In 2016, governments
around the world shut
down internet access
more than 50 times, according
to the digital rights organization
Access Now, “suppressing elec-
tions, slowing economies and
limiting free speech,” as Lyndal
Rowlands reported for the Inter
Press Service.
“In the worst cases, internet
shutdowns have been associated
with human rights violations,”
Rowlands was told by Deji Olukotun of Access Now. “What we have
found is that internet shutdowns go hand in hand with atrocities.” Olu-
kotun said.
Kevin Collier also covered the report for news site Vocativ, noting
that Access Now uses a “conservative metric,” counting “repeated, sim-
ilar outages”—like those that occurred during Gabon’s widely criticized
internet “curfew”—as a single instance.
“Many countries intentionally blacked out internet access during
elections and to quell protest. Not only do these shutdowns restrict
freedom of speech, they also hurt economies around the world,” Proj-
ect Censored notes.
“Understanding what this means for internet users can be diffi cult,”
Azad Essa reported for Al Jazeera in May 2017. Advocates of online
rights “need to be constantly pushing for laws that protect this space
and demand that governments meet their obligations in digital spaces
just as in non-digital spaces,” he was told by the U.N.’s special rappor-
teur on freedom of opinion and expression, David Kaye.
“ MANY
COUNTRIES INTENTIONALLY BLACKED
OUT INTERNET ACCESS DURING ELECTIONS AND TO QUELL
PROTEST . NOT ONLY DO THESE SHUTDOWNS
RESTRICT FREEDOM OF SPEECH , THEY ALSO HURT
ECONOMIES AROUND THE WORLD .”
Willamette Week OCTOBER 11, 2017 wweek.com
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