Intergenerational equity for ‘future generations’

Our editorial’s ¹ opening emphasis was on disadvantaged groups in disadvantaged (at-risk) areas of the globe, (where) the first nine months of life are especially vulnerable. We welcome the response’s ² concerns about the early antecedents of later mortality and morbidity. The global response to disasters should be aware of those ‘early antecedents’. This re-emphasises the long-term impacts ³ of risks affecting pregnancy outcomes.

Our editorial sought to ensure universal inclusion of those invisible and presently excluded antecedents – the unborn – in the post 2015 framework for international development. This accords fully with ‘sustainable development’ – the UNGA resolution 42/187 – the report of Gro Harlem Brundtland’s World Commission on Environment and Development in 1987, viz:

Believing that sustainable development, which implies meeting the needs of the present without compromising the ability of future generations to meet their own needs, should become a central guiding principle of the United Nations, Governments and private institutions, organizations and enterprises. ⁴

Brundtland’s call for intergenerational equity for present and ‘future generations’ should include both the mother and the unborn child, who both have needs: dietary, water and harmony, as well as freedom from: violence, anxiety, antigens and toxins. The combined needs of the mother and the unborn child may increasingly conflict ⁵ amidst competition for scarce resources in contexts prone to climate, environmental, economical and socio-political change.

The anthropologist writing the ‘Letter from an unborn child’ has courageously continued to champion the universal public health of all workers (and their families) tragically killed in the Bangladesh factory fires. ⁶

The response ² should neither put words in our mouths nor misquotations in our strategy. The strategy cited in the editorial is the United Nations International Strategy for Disaster Reduction. The editorial seeks inclusion for a vulnerable and presently excluded group within that universal strategy for the post-2015 framework. It emphasises the ‘mother-baby dyad’ during pregnancy and notes ‘the stress of a mother’s deprivation’. The response, distracted by the red herring fallacy of uncited sectarian crusades, first paints and then sees the Fata Morgana mirage of the ‘elevati(on of) the value of the fetus above that of the mother’.

‘As climate change will have a substantial impact on the health and survival of the next generation among already challenged populations’, ⁷ we exhort the respondent to renounce sectarian ideologies and include the logical responsibility for foetal health, particularly among the disadvantaged in disaster-prone areas of poor countries.