Neither left nor right has focused adequately on maternal health

There is an element of anger among women who've been raped. There's certainly a major element of humiliation. But it really does seem like a medical condition of shock and horror.

Conservatives, who have presumed that the key to preventing AIDS is abstinence-only education, and liberals, who have focused on distribution of condoms, should both note that the intervention that has tested most cost-effective in Africa is neither... Secular bleeding hearts and religious bleeding hearts will have to forge a common cause.

We tie ourselves in knots when we act as if democracy is good for the United States and Israel but not for the Arab world. For far too long, we've treated the Arab world as just an oil field.

One thing the humanitarian world doesn't do well is marketing. As a journalist, I get pitched every day by companies that have new products. Meanwhile, you have issues like clean water, literacy for girls, female empowerment. People flinch at the idea of marketing these because marketing sounds like something only companies do.

China was probably the worst place in the world to grow up female 100 years ago. There was foot binding, female infanticide, concubinage, and child marriage, and now it's one of the better places. So I really do feel that we're on the right side of history here.

The news media's silence, particularly television news, is reprehensible.