This heartrending book project opens with a harrowing set of statistics: 287,000 women have lost their lives due to complications in pregnancy or childbirth; 220 million women around the world are still awaiting the education and services to time and space their next pregnancy in a healthy way. These findings take hold of each of the book’s 40-plus contributors, who share a personal story about a specific woman or family who has been impacted (positively or negatively) by a pregnancy or childbirth.

Readers will have the opportunity to explore this worldwide problem and how pregnancy and childbirth continue to affect women from all different countries around the world…and from every walk of life. They will learn more about this ongoing crisis by discovering how maternal and child health is dramatically affected by the timing and spacing of pregnancies; how strong mothers are the key to healthy families, communities and even nations; what is happening with regard to male involvement, child marriage, slavery and orphan care throughout the world; and why maternal health matters to people of faith.

"Readers will find much value not only in the stories shared from around the world, but from the grateful responses women who have been helped display as they tell about the life-changing differences medical support has made for them."

Certainly, this isn’t simply a female problem or a children’s issue. Rather, it is a human dilemma because how women are giving birth and how often definitely alters their world and the world at large. Readers will discover how they can make a difference through donations or by getting actively involved in a number of organizations that support and educate women and their children. With contributors across all socio-economic, religious and political lifestyles --- including Hillary Clinton, Bruce Wilkinson, Jennifer Nettles, Jimmy Carter, Desmond Tutu, Christine Caine, Natalie Grant, Tony Campolo, Michael W. Smith and Mary Beth Chapman --- readers will value the diversity of the writers who share their stories to the same end, helping women and children live and lead healthier lives.

Each chapter includes a true account of a real woman (or a family) and how she (or they) was impacted by education and medical services that served to alter their lives forever. Whether the women depicted here were young or a bit older when social services entered their lives, it was all for the good. Medical educators helped to teach women (and men) how to use contraceptives not only to space their children out some, but to actually save their lives. Some girls barely into their teens have suffered from having too many children too early on, and medical workers are helping to prevent unwanted births and repair the damage done to these girls’ bodies.

Regardless of a person’s background or belief system, it is clear that more education and support are required to ensure the safety and longevity of women everywhere as it pertains to conception and childbirth. Readers will find much value not only in the stories shared from around the world, but from the grateful responses women who have been helped display as they tell about the life-changing differences medical support has made for them.