This Supermodel Says, "Let's Save Lives Together"
"Mothers need mothers," says model-turned-activist Christy Turlington Burns, whose organization rescues women and newborns every day. Get a sneak peak at our cover interview here, and join the movement.
On why she started Every Mother Counts
“When I was seven months pregnant with my son, my mother and I took a trip to El Salvador, where she’s from. Frequent visits with her to see my extended family have taught me how different life can be if you are born into poverty. This time, we traveled with the humanitarian organization CARE, and I visited a village where women were offered basic prenatal services when they came to collect water. At that point in my pregnancy I was seeing my midwife on a weekly basis. I felt great—even more prepared for birth than I had been with my daughter. I wasn’t worried about the delivery this second time, but on our trip I realized that had I given birth to my daughter in a village like this one, I likely would have died. (Turlington experienced a postpartum hemorrhage when delivering her daughter and had to have her placenta manually extracted). We were miles from a hospital, with no electricity, running water, or paved roads. There I stood with my plastic bottle of clean water, and these other women were, hugely pregnant, carrying heavy buckets from the well with their older babies tied on their backs. They had toddlers running alongside, families and farms to take care of, and, happily, plenty of other women to share their pregnancies with. We joked with each other, teasing a little about our bellies. The similarities we shared through our pregnancies were obvious; the disparities less so.”