Christy Turlington Burns Launches 'Giving Birth in America: California', A Dramatic Turnaround Story

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Christy Turlington Burns Launches 'Giving Birth in America: California', A Dramatic Turnaround Story

Giving Birth in America is a documentary series that examines some of the reasons for the alarming current statistics about maternal mortality rates in the US, where the US finds itself with maternal mortality stats ranking at the very bottom of the developed world. The series is presented by Every Mother Counts, the non-profit founded by Christy Turlington Burns in 2011, dedicated to making childbirth safe for women everywhere. This fifth and most recent episode, California, focuses on Dr. Cristina Gamboa, an OB-GYN in Watsonville who provides pre-natal health care to an immigrant farmworker from Mexico with a high-risk pregnancy. 

Christy Turlington Burns discusses her new documentary, made with ‘Every Mother Counts’ and ‘Giving Birth in America’ director/producer Clancy McCarty in the October 2018 issue of C Magazine.

Christy Turlington Burns Talks Maternal Health With C Magazine On Eve Of New Documentary

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Supermodel Christy Turlington Burns covers the October 2018 issue of C Magazine. Alison Edmond styles Turlington in noble origins looks from Gucci, Prada, Michael Kors and more for images by Pamela Hanson.

Christy meets with C Magazine at the New York City headquarters of Every Mother Counts, the non-profit organization Turlington Burns founded in 2010. Gracing more than 1,000 magazine covers for more than three decades is a part of her legacy, but Turlington Burns has a different primary purpose now. “Running an organization and raising a family forces you to prioritize. You can’t do everything at the same time,” she says. “Someone once told me, ‘You have to sequence.’ So, for me, that means family, EMC, and I guess I take the last sliver!”

The organization has raised more than $21 million, and has expanded its grant portfolio to include Bangladesh, Guatemala, Haiti, India, Tanzania, Uganda and the United States. And while maternal mortality has dropped worldwide, according to UNICEF, from 532,000 in 1990 to 303,000 in 2015, the rate of maternal mortality in America is rising, as analyzed by the Global Burden of Disease. It’s widely believed that much of this change is being driven by Republican policies determined to close down Planned Parenthood, often the only women’s health clinic in poor areas of America. Texas, for example, now has the maternal death rate of a third world country.

Helena Christensen, Christy Turlington & Danai Gurira At Ali Hewson's Edun Fall 2018 Presentation

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Helena Christensen, Christy Turlington & Danai Gurira At Ali Hewson's Edun Fall 2018 Presentation

Vogue reviews Edun's Fall 2018 presentation, writing that in Nairobi, Kenya, "you're only as awesome as your boda boda." The wilder and crazier your motorcycle taxi wheels, the more stylish you are in Nairobi. The inspired embellishment of boda bodas worked its way into Edun's Fall 2018 collection, which got a big boost from two of the industry's greats: Helena Christensen and Christy Turlington.

Black Panther star Danai Gurira showed off bold, exuberant colors against the backdrop of a pastel pink boda boda.

In 2009 LVMH took a stake in Edun, founded by Ali Hewson and her husband Bono in 2005. Helena Christensen is bff with Hewson and an integral member of the Edun spiritual/artisan-inspired design mindset. Helena and Ali first met in 1993 when the Danish beauty first modeled in Hewson's show for the Irish Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Children at the Point in Dublin.

Now a professional photographer, Helena frequently turns her lens to Bono's U2 band and to her role working as an ambassador with the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees. Christy Turlington and husband Ed Burns frequently join the party, as do Trudie Styler and Sting. The Edun lookbook images were shot in New Orleans, presumably by Christensen. 

Christy Turlington's Maternal Health 'No Woman No Cry' Full Documentary

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Christy Turlington's Maternal Health 'No Woman No Cry' Full Documentary

Statistically, development experts agree that women are far more likely than men to invest available resources on their children’s education and welfare. When mothers are killed or left debilitated by childbirth, cycles of poverty and misery are particularly harsh for girl babies and young girls in the family. 

I didn’t want it to feel like an advocacy film,” says Christy Turlington about her documentary “No Woman No Cry”, which also made its debut at last week’s conference on reproductive health. “I didn’t want it to feel like an advocacy film,” Turlington says, “I wanted it to be an advocacy tool.” That means “No Woman No Cry” is almost wholly free of development speak and policy recommendations. via The Daily Beast

All who know her understand that Christy Turlington Burns is an activist first and a supermodel second. Turlington may have just signed up for the A/W Louis Vuitton campaign, but her focus is sharing the powerful stories of at-risk pregnant women in four parts of the world, including a remote Maasai tribe in Tanzania, a slum of Bangladesh, a post-abortion care ward in Guatemala, and a prenatal clinic in the United States.