Being Pro-Choice is About Much More Than Just the Right to Abortion Care

Posted on January 20, 2012 by Danielle Zielinski

Originally published on RH Reality Check

With the anniversary of Roe v. Wade on Jan. 22, the words “pro-choice” seem to be everywhere. You’ll hear them in impassioned speeches, and see them on colorful posters, on blogs and in tweets.  And when you do, you’ll probably think of abortion.

That’s understandable. And undeniably, the right to choose an abortion is something that must be protected.  A woman chooses abortion for the most intimate, personal reasons, and no one else is qualified to make that choice.

But abortion is far from the only choice a woman makes about her reproductive health. And if you really think about it, why wait to defend those reproductive health choices until she is at the door of an abortion clinic?

True freedom of choice — about sex, and if and when to have children — starts way before then. A woman’s ability to choose the family she wants often depends on her economic status, her knowledge, and her access to health services, including contraception.  It also depends on where she lives; services varies greatly from state to state and country to country.

And in every state and country, politicians are at the center of the decisions about women’s reproductive choices.  Last year, conservative forces in Congress and many state legislatures proposed, and in some cases passed, laws that restricted women’s access to vital reproductive health services. Some politicians even talked of banning birth control. And the assault wasn’t limited to within our borders. Proposed cuts to international family planning funding and an attempt to reinstate the Global Gag Rule threatened to further limit the choices of women in developing countries.

Already, 215 million women in developing countries want to avoid pregnancy but lack access to or information about modern contraception. Some women can’t get accurate information, and don’t use contraception because of myths about side effects or infertility. Others travel long distances to the nearest health clinic, only to find the contraceptives they need are out of stock.

There are child brides who go on to become teen moms, many against their own wishes. There are 53 million unintended pregnancies and 251,000 maternal deaths each year that could be prevented if we met women’s needs for family planning and maternal health services.

Having better choices in any of these scenarios could make a profound difference in a woman’s life. And that’s something to get passionate about too. So as we mark the anniversary of Roe v. Wade, let’s understand “pro-choice” with its intended, more holistic meaning, and fight for the full range of reproductive choices for all women.

Let’s be pro not just about abortion, but also about:

  • The choice to get accurate, comprehensive information about contraception.
  • The choice to marry or be single; and to have sex only when ready.
  • The choice to delay childbearing, space births, and decide when to stop having kids.
  • The choice of health clinics with competent professionals, that don’t take hours or days to get to.
  • The choice of birth control pills and IUDs and condoms and other contraceptive methods.

It may not be the stuff of buttons and posters, but it’s the stuff of everyday life.

Posted in Contraceptives and Condoms, Family Planning, Global Gag Rule | Tagged , | Leave a comment

PAI Thanks You and Bets Loretta Lynn Does Too

Posted on January 11, 2012 by Suzanne Ehlers

Thank you for a great 2011.

Over the holidays, my father and I were driving in his truck through Texas and heard Loretta Lynn sing The Pill on the radio. I was struck by the frankness of the lyrics: This incubator is overused because you`ve kept it filled, The feeling good comes easy now since I`ve got the pill.Loretta_Lynn_Video

We listened to Loretta against the backdrop of a state political environment that gets more conservative each time I visit. New research shows Texas cut family planning funding by 66% and is introducing more restrictions on reproductive health. Loretta, your message was not heard!

Luckily, PAI’s message was. By you.

Last year we fought off hostile forces in Congress that tried to reduce international access to life-saving contraception. Together, we signed petitions and held elected officials accountable, saving hundreds of thousands of lives and preventing unintended pregnancies.

Those victories are your victories. Thank you.

2012 is a big year with crucial elections around the world, a major environmental conference in Rio, and the International Aids Conference in D.C. We commit to giving you the latest on reproductive health and the world’s women amidst all that noise.

Thanks to Loretta for the vision, and thanks to you for the future.Here’s to 2012.

Signature

Suzanne Ehlers,
President and CEO, Population Action International

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A Story of Hope

Posted on December 21, 2011 by Esther Agbarakwe

Durban as a platform for youth involvement in combating climate change

Half of the world’s population is made of an amazing group young people, creative, strong and committed to finding solutions to the world’s greatest challenge; climate change. We traveled by road, sea and air to meet with our peers in Durban, South Africa for the UN climate talks.  We began our participation with a 3-day Conference of Youth (COY7) at the University of Kwazulu Natal (UKZN). We held workshops on climate change policy, linking population and climate change, media and messaging, building youth climate coalitions and we dance to the tune of “Waka Waka- it time for Africa”.  We met too with ‘elders’ who are deciding what our future will look like – without much consideration of how and what we think. We, who will inherit the present unsustainable world whichever way they leave it.

Much was at stake. After the excitement, expectation and ultimate disappointment and farce of the Copenhagen summit in December 2009, the credibility of the entire UN process has been under great scrutiny. The 2010 conference in Cancún restored some faith, but as things stand there is still no legally binding international framework for cuts in carbon emissions beyond 2012. That is the point at which the first commitment period of the Kyoto Protocol comes to an end. The future of the Kyoto Protocol has been a major sticking point for years, and was again at these talks. The final outcomes are a Green Climate Fund being instated, the Kyoto Protocol having a second commitment period and there being a road-map to a new legal binding treaty from 2015.

 

This year marked a great year for the youth climate movement as we were boosted with a permanent observer seat at the UNFCCC under the YOUNGO (Youth NGOs). What has been the most important and exciting news from the conference has been the involvement of youth. There is a story of hope from Durban—it’s the story of the youth and their allies who refused to remain silent, and who will stand up every day and everywhere and show the bravery we saw in South Africa. That’s how we’ll win this fight–and that’s the progress we’re most proud of.

Posted in Climate Change, Youth | Tagged , | 1 Comment

Aid Effectiveness Forum: What Does It Mean for Reproductive Health?

Posted on December 7, 2011 by Suzanna Dennis

Aid effectiveness and government investments directly shape the amount and quality of funding for reproductive health.  For example, the move to greater country ownership over aid has advocates concerned that governments will not sufficiently prioritize sexual and reproductive health.

Last week, global development powerbrokers convened in Busan, South Korea to assess progress towards aid effectiveness goals, develop a more inclusive global aid framework and address issues beyond aid.  The organizers of this Fourth High Level Forum on Aid Effectiveness (HLF-4) declared it a resounding success:  They delivered a global Partnership for Development Cooperation bringing together all development actors around a shared set of development principles.  This Partnership includes traditional DAC donors, the so-called BRICs or emerging donors, civil society and the private sector.  And the negotiators maintained agreed standards and commitments to transparency, human rights, gender equality and good development practice.  Indeed, the Busan outcome is a success in terms of inclusiveness, and at least maintaining global commitments.  And while there was some progress on untying aid and country systems, there is plenty of unfinished business.

But Busan’s inclusiveness came at a cost.  China, and India to a lesser extent, walked away from the negotiating table a number of times.  They only agreed to be part of the Global Partnership if it was based on watered down text on human rights and transparency.  And China insisted that this partnership around shared principles is based on differential commitments for emerging donors (see Nancy Birdsall’s blog for a cautiously optimistic take on China).  Furthermore, any commitments around South-South cooperation in the outcome document are explicitly voluntary.The irony is that, like previous agreements from the Paris and Accra high-level  forums, none of the commitments in the Busan Outcome Document are truly binding.

But what did Busan actually change for people working to promote sexual and reproductive health and rights (SRHR)?  Not much.  But it codified a number of trends already underway.  In Busan, the global development community:

  • Continued to open up space for civil society groups including those working on SRHR to more meaningfully participate in setting development priorities: 1) by including civil society in the preparation and the event itself, even with a seat at the negotiating table; and 2) by recognizing the need for an enabling environment for civil society in the outcome document.
  • Contributed to momentum around transparency and accountability in development finance and impact, including on reproductive health.  It will be more challenging for governments to keep their accounting books closed, and more difficult for donors to be opaque and keep supporting non-transparent regimes.  This increased recognition of the right to information can be used by reproductive health groups to identify investments in the sector, and push for greater prioritization.
  • Increased pressure on reproductive health providers and rights advocates to demonstrate the impact, or results of their work in the communities they serve, preferably in quantifiable terms.  Bilateral donors face similar pressure from their citizenry.  Multilaterals risk being passed up by funding if they cannot demonstrate that they are effective.  Moving forward in this new results environment, we need to be sure that the intended beneficiaries of investments are shaping the results that get measured.
  • Recognized and addressed the need to focus on all sources of development finance, including domestic resource mobilization, in addition to aid.  This acknowledgement opens up more space for governments to develop policies that keep resources within their countries to the possible benefit of health systems and SRHR.  Currently huge amounts of money leave the global South in the form of illicit financial flows and tax breaks for foreign companies.

Over the next six months, civil society groups headed by Better Aid will work hard to make sure that the new Global Partnership lays out an implementation framework and indicators to measure Busan that respond to people’s needs.  In the longer term, the collective task of PAI and others is to ensure that this new GlobalPartnership that includes China, India, and others begins to advance global human rights and transparency.  Sharing of experiences from the health sector, and reproductive health specifically, will be critical to ensure global advocacy continues to be grounded in local experience.

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A Strong Opening and an Open Letter to our Leaders

Posted on November 30, 2011 by Esther Agbarakwe

This is one of a series of on-the-ground updates from the ongoing COP climate negotiations in Durban, South Africa.

The 17th  United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change Conference of Parties (COP17) opened in Durban today with a very strong statement on women by both the outgoing president of COP16, Ms. Patricia Espinosa, and current president of COP17 Maite Nkoana-Mashabane.  Both ladies mentioned women’s empowerment during their statements as key to helping family adapt to the changing climate and urged governments to support women’s efforts in safer climate initiatives.

Ms. Nkoana-Mashabane, who is also South Africa’s International Relations Minister, said world leaders had gathered because of the concerns of millions of people. She urged the leaders to be bold in their actions in agreeing on reducing greenhouse gas emissions.

It was so inspiring when PAI was mentioned by the COP president, as she invited me to deliver the Youth Opening Statement during the Opening COP plenary.

This is what I said, and what I hope our leaders will consider this week during the negotiations:

The future cannot be discussed without youth. The future is ours. You can see that our patience has come to an end; we are willing to raise our voice even if it means taking us to the edge.

We do not want Durban to be a burying ground for the Kyoto Protocol. The renewal of commitment to the Kyoto Protocol in Durban is crucial as Africa and other vulnerable countries’ future depends on it. Everyone in this hall must collaborate to create solutions. As we travelled by road from Nairobi to Durban we collected petitions requesting you to act fast.

We believe that the Conference of Parties has come of age. We are no longer in the childhood stages of determining solutions to climate change. The time of maturity has arrived.   Some of you here have shown leadership while others have blocked progress. We ask you to negotiate with open doors filled with compassion, integrity and justice. We ask you to show the world the leadership you have been entrusted with .

Thank you.

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Are African Voices Being Heard?

Posted on November 29, 2011 by Esther Agbarakwe

This is the first in a series of blog updates from the ongoing COP climate negotiations in Durban, South Africa.

Esther Agbarakwe

More than 400 young people from all over the world gathered at the University of KwaZulu Natal (UKZN) in South Africa this week for the 7th Conference of Youth.  The Conference of Youth (COY) is about bringing together youth from all over the world who are passionate about sustainability and climate change. It’s a place to connect, share skills and build a movement.

At about 7.30 am after a very fast  breakfast, I called a taxi to take me to UKZN’s Howard College, my backpack filled with PAI Materials for the Youth Expo. I arrived at UKZN at 8.30 am, due to heavy traffic. This having been my second time at COY, I felt I had a bit of  experience and was inspired to be attending the COY7 on African soil.

Arriving at the venue, my first question was: Where are the African youth delegates? I whispered this to my African youth delegate from Cameroun, because the room was already filled with young people from the global north (you could see the marked difference from the skin color alone).

I was worried, because our hope as African youth facilitators was that for the first time, African youth would have equal representation at the Conference of the Parties (COP), large climate negotiations that this year are being held in Durban.  Just then, the African Youth Justice Caravan arrived and the hall was now more than half filled with African delegates — mostly from the Southern African Countries (Kenya, South Africa, and Malawi, which had the largest delegation).

Youth in Durban enjoy a moment of fun

I was proud of this and felt a sort of entitled solidarity with the “African movement.” Even though the people running the COY sessions were mostly Australian or international, at least a lot of the delegates were local, I thought to myself. But what does locality mean in the face of a global movement? Who speaks, and who gets listened to? What capacity do they have to effectively engage with other youths on the relevant issues at the COP?  In a lot of senses, “Africa” (the continent is sadly still not being diversified by most youth, though it is 53 individual countries) is being represented in global talks and movements around the world, just as it is at COY. But does this mean that “African” voice gets listened to in the same way in which other organizations from the global north get listened to?

There are lots of African voices speaking out, but there is something very uncomfortable about the way in which we are ‘facilitated’ to speak by others, and the way in which they in turn listen to what we have to say. Of course, the global north, in their experience and monetary advantage, do have a lot to teach us and  can help us “build capacity.” This is especially true at political gatherings such as COP, which require a specific way of speaking to be taken even remotely seriously.  And that’s something we need. But it’s not all we need.

Making my tribute to the Late Professor Wangari Maathai at the opening plenary, I spoke of the need to empower young African women as Wangari believed and worked for with her Green Belt movement.  For me, seeing myself standing on the podium speaking and helping to facilitate the COY was just one example of this.

Soon after, I took my heavy backpack outside to get set for the exhibition. I got a table outside where a long line of youth were standing to get food, and many of them stopped to talk to me about my statement, and the importance of empowering women. Everything points to the fact that African youth and global youth at large are very interested to know and be engaged in the issue of sexuality and sustainability. The question we need to answer is: how do they make the connections, and what actions can they take?

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Steal My Idea, Please! Why An Open Source Attitude Can Make Apps Go Viral

Posted on November 7, 2011 by Michael Khoo

Last week I got ripped off, but for the first time, I’m happy about it. They didn’t just steal my wallet and phone—they took something that me and a team of people spent months to create.

Earlier this week, the world turned 7 billion. Yes, 7 billion people. It’s a strangely large number that can freak people out and put them to sleep at the same time.

We knew the event would get a lot of public attention so a few months ago, my organization had a brainstorm about it. We tried to think about how we could take this overwhelming number and steer the global conversation towards something about individuals. Instead of hearing old white men call for population control, we wanted to highlight the lives of women in developing countries, millions of whom want but lack access to basic contraception. This milestone was a global event, so we knew that changing the conversation would be a challenge for a small nonprofit in Washington, D.C. But we figured we had to try.

We came up with the idea of giving everyone their own number. Each of us is, after all, a piece of that grand calculation. If people went to a site and entered their birthday, we could show them on a graph what the world population was when they were born and where they fit in. For example, I was born on May 21, 1971, when world population was about 3,810,167,922. We called the app “What’s Your Number?” It was a messaging hook that allowed us to give everyone a little piece of the pie, while gently steering the conversation away from “the sky is falling and there’s nothing we can do except sterilize poor people”.

In late September, we sent the app to our small email list with a subject line that slightly tricked people: “What’s Your Number?” We felt so confident that I even spammed my entire personal address book with it (sorry, mom). Its reception blew away any of our previous metrics. 111% open rate, 80% participation on the site, 1/3 forwarded it. At this point, we knew we were on to something.

But something funny happened along the way…the idea we developed showed up in the British press. First, the Guardian made a suspiciously similar counter a few weeks after we released ours. Then, during the week before the world hit 7 Billion, the BBC released an online app called…What’s Your Number? Seriously. They even used the same graphing approach, the same language about “fitting in,” and flooded the twitter hashtag we’d been using for a month. An irritating number of people tried to console me with the quote that, “imitation is the highest form of flattery”.

A lawyer friend of mine said we could sue them and I was tempted; every nonprofit could always use some extra cash [hint hint- http://bit.ly/92XOOp]. But instead, we held the open-source attitude that new ideas are always a good thing and we kept plugging away. If what we really wanted to do was change the global conversation, influencing large international news outlets was success.  We continued to look up celebrity and journalists’ birthdates and tweeted their number. We fanned the flames on Facebook and targeted every influential we could find.

Our first big break was when we went viral in Hungary. Don’t laugh, it shut down our server twice. Next we waited through another agonizing week of steady but only medium-high traffic, before, finally, it went viral in the U.S. Yes, that dreaded word viral. In the final week before the 7 billion milestone, 300,000 people visited the app. All with no paid media support. If we add the BBC’s app’s metrics, as we surely will to our funders, I clock the success at around 3 million people.

The media copycats weren’t perfect. They left out the central discussion about women’s access to contraception in their version. It gave me empathy for the down and out singer who gets a big record deal, only to find out they pitch-corrected his vocals. When I sent a short complaint, their legal department responded saying they disagreed and that, regardless, “Copyright in the UK…does not protect ideas, concepts or systems.” Yes, thanks BBC, I believe that was already clear.

What we can honestly say is that with a good idea, a lot of work and very little money, we helped steer a conversation. We took population from being a problem for other people in other areas to one you should think about right here, right now.

*Michael Khoo is the Vice-President for Communications Population Action International.

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Food Security for 7 Billion

Posted on November 1, 2011 by Dr. Nafis Sadik

Originally published on  the Global Post’s Global Pulse blog.

This is a guest post by Dr. Nafis Sadik, the United Nations Special Envoy for HIV and AIDS in Asia and the Pacific and serves on the Board of Directors of Population Action International. She is an obstetrician-gynecologist by training, and served as Executive Director of the United Nations Population Fund from 1987-2000.

This week, the birth of a baby somewhere took the world population past the 7 billion mark. That’s something to celebrate. Few thought the world could sustain that many people, ever – yet here we are. If you’re over 45, world population has doubled in your lifetime, and it’s still growing.

But the news is not all good. As we pass the 7 billion milestone, and go on to 9 billion or more by 2050, we face a “perfect storm” of future needs for food, energy and water. There are already 600 million people today who can’t count on eating tomorrow. And tomorrow there will be a lot more faces around the table.

We will need all our ingenuity, and all our resources, to weather this perfect storm. I’m going to concentrate on only one resource, but one of the most important – the world’s women.

Let me say up front that I am not calling for so-called “population control” or anything like that. Birth rates in many countries have been falling for many years. Families in Mexico, for example, are half the size they were in 1980, because women have decided they want smaller families than their mothers’. That decision is a fundamental freedom for women – a basic human right.

But the mothers of the next generation are already born, so population goes on growing. How fast depends on whether women in Africa and South Asia (where most of the world’s babies are born) can make their own decisions about childbearing. If it’s up to them, they will have fewer children than their mothers, and population growth will be slower. In this case, human rights and global needs mesh perfectly. Perfect storm, meet perfect answer – at least in this one, all-important area.

There’s more. The “tiger economies”– East Asian countries like South Korea and Singapore whose powerhouse growth startled the world in the 1980s and 1990s – built their economic prosperity on a social base laid down in the 1960s and 1970s. With universal health care and education for women, population growth slowed down. Women with smaller families began working outside of the home. Schools and health systems with smaller intakes had more to spend on each child. Healthy, educated girls and boys grew into productive men and women with a strong sense of their own worth. Resources were freed up for investment – and so on.

South Asia isn’t South Korea, but there are lessons here. How do women get to exercise their rights? It isn’t just a matter of more family planning – though there are more than 200 million women today who would use family planning if they could. The policy choices before us are more complex. They include three basic elements – health (including reproductive health), education, and equality with men. All are interlinked and all are needed if women are really going to be free to make their own decisions.

Universal health care, education and equality for women may sound like a tall order, but it’s already on the world’s agenda. The Millennium Development Goals, agreed on by 189 heads of state in 2000, call for universal primary education and closing the gender gap in education. They call for a 75 percent drop in maternal mortality, and universal access to reproductive health information and services. The overall goal is to cut extreme poverty in half by 2015.

There are obstacles. There are always obstacles. Poverty is self-perpetuating. It limits the choices countries, and people, can make. But the first and most important obstacle is in the mind. The Millennium Development Goals aren’t realistic? Most experts think they are rather modest. Many countries have already met some of them, and many more could do so with the minimum of support. We can’t afford foreign aid? Actually, the US contribution to overseas assistance is about $60 billion – worth about as much as the food this country throws away every three months.

Women aren’t ready to take the lead? Tell that to Ellen Johnson Sirleaf, Liberia’s President and this year’s Nobel Peace Prize winner, or any of millions of women working as entrepreneurs, or in government, banking and industry. Tell that to the women farmers who produce half the world’s food, and 80 to 90 percent of Africa’s – aren’t they already proving that they can make headway, even against the wind?

The Millennium Goals are achievable. Achieving them will transform the lives of girls and women across the globe. They will also help weather the perfect storm, and take us into the world of 8 billion and beyond. Today’s girls and young women are not only the mothers of the next generation – they are the farmers, traders, legislators, investors and leaders of tomorrow’s world. In the most literal sense, they are our future. They deserve our help.

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Stemming population growth is a cheap way to limit climate change

Posted on October 31, 2011 by Thomas Lovejoy

This piece originally appeared in The Guardian

There’s no one way to suddenly cut carbon emissions, but better family planning where it’s most needed is a cost-effective start

On October 31, according to forecasts, the 7 billionth person will be born. A few weeks before this milestone, Adnan Mevic, whom the United Nations declared Baby 6 Billion in 1999, celebrated one of his own. He turned 12.

More than 200,000 people are added to the population each day, and we’re expected to keep growing for years to come, reaching anywhere from 8 billion to 11 billion mid-century.

The idea of living sustainably, of “going green”, has recently become a buzzword when talking about everything from energy to water to agriculture. We certify energy-efficient LEED buildings. We build electric cars. We invest in solar power. But in terms of our own numbers, we are anything but sustainable.

Of course, consumption is a big part of the problem. With less than 5% of the world’s population, the US consumes about one-fifth of the world’s energy. We’re among the top countries in the world in terms of per-capita emissions, and the average American is responsible for about 200 times as much carbon as the average Ethiopian.

But it’s the poorest areas of the world, those least responsible for the generation of greenhouse gases, that are disproportionately feeling the effects of climate change.

Over-exploitation and habitat loss as a result of population pressures is also accelerating the extinction of plant and animal species, undermining the poor in parts of the world where people are heavily dependent on nature for livelihoods. Areas of rapid population growth overlay those with high numbers of threatened and vulnerable plant species, and much of the coming growth is expected to take place in the tropics, where ecosystems harbour the planet’s richest forms of biodiversity.

Responding to climate change and protecting plant and animal species requires integrated solutions from governments, businesses and advocates. We need to reduce land-based pollution and stop destructive fishing practices that weaken coral reefs. We need land use reforms, government incentives for developing biofuels and alternative energy sources, and education. However, doing any of that without also making efforts to slow population growth makes an uphill climb even more difficult.

It’s unpopular to apply sustainability to the concept of population growth, as the word “population” evokes worries about state control and limits on reproductive freedom. But slower population growth can not only lessen vulnerability to climate change impacts, it also has the potential to significantly reduce future greenhouse gas emissions. Following a slower population growth path could reduce fossil fuel emissions by an extra 1.1 billion tonnes of carbon per year by 2050.

About half of those reductions would come from fertility decline in the United States and developing countries, and could be achieved simply through meeting existing demand for family planning services. More than 200 million women in developing countries want to avoid pregnancy, but need modern contraception. The emissions reductions that could be expected through meeting these family planning needs would be roughly equivalent to the reductions that would come from ending all tropical deforestation.

Compared with the technological investments needed to reduce greenhouse gas emissions globally, the cost of meeting the current demand for family planning is cheap. Emissions averted through investments in family planning would cost about $4.50 per tonne of carbon dioxide, compared with options such as solar power ($30 per tonne) or carbon capture and storage from new coal plants ($60 per tonne).

Every human being has a right to a certain quality of life, which is harder to achieve with growing population. Human numbers are central to a achieving a sustainable future. As we celebrate the birth of the 7 billionth child, we should also make investments now to improve his or her future.

• Thomas Lovejoy is a conservation biologist who coined the term “biological diversity”. He currently holds the Biodiversity Chair at the Heinz Center for Science, Economics, and the Environment based in Washington, DC, and serves on the Board of Directors for Population Action International.

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Numbers Matter, But People Count

Posted on October 27, 2011 by Suzanne Ehlers

Originally posted on the Huffington Post

If you haven’t heard by now, the world is adding its seven billionth person on Oct. 31, 2011. A few months before this milestone, Population Action International took to the streets of Washington to find out what people thought about our growing population. Their reactions to seven billion speak for themselves:

“Wow”

“That’s a lot.”

“I’m surprised it’s gone up quite that fast.”

“More people will need more energy, more food.”

“Do we have enough funding for that?”

“It’s definitely going to affect each individual.”

While people were understandably awed by the numbers, their answers also revealed concern about how those numbers impact their — and all of our — lives. It’s a balance PAI has always tried to strike, between big picture demographics and the needs and rights of individuals. In other words, numbers matter, but people count.

 

When we undertook the first edition of the publication Why Population Matters in 1996, we saw an opportunity to open a conversation with population devotees, to help them unpack their numbers game and see a woman’s face at the center of it all. We also, importantly, saw an opportunity to talk to women’s rights advocates, who were suspicious of quantitative analyses that could lead to quota-based systems.

In the 60s and 70s, when the population issue was gaining prominence, the concern was largely if not exclusively about numbers. Some devastating experiments were the outcome — coercion, sterilization, and blatant disregard for human rights. The “overpopulation” crusade suggested, however implicitly, that some people are superfluous, which PAI finds morally unacceptable.

In 1994, at the International Conference on Population and Development in Cairo, the world came around to a different way of thinking — framed fully within a rights-based context. But really, who lives their life by a UN mandate? The real benefits of that framework were conferred on women who had no knowledge of it. It showed up in small ways — in empowerment, in the way they lived their lives. In the way I live my life.

Fast forward to where we are now, facing renewed attacks in as hostile a climate as any of us can remember. Politically, there are relentless attacks on women’s rights and health. Economically, we are witnessing deep and irrevocable cuts to spending and foreign aid. Even the religious and cultural corner is waging newly energized attacks on contraception, though Catholics, for example, admit — in poll after poll — to using it widely.

Attacks on reproductive health may seem small in the face of the economic and political crises of the day, but we must remember that it is small acts that contribute to the big, sweeping changes. Something as simple as having the status to make your own decisions about children — being able to get birth control at a nearby clinic — may not seem like a big event. But multiply that by billions of women the world over, and it is the foundation of a constant push to make the world more equal, better educated, more sustainable, more safe.

Any way you slice it, it comes down to women being valued and having the freedom to make good choices for themselves and their families. When they can’t, numbers problems ensue. This is true in high-fertility countries, where high birth rates create high maternal deaths and growing demands for resources and infrastructure. It’s equally true in low-fertility countries (or aging communities), where women are refraining from having children because society doesn’t offer a way to balance motherhood and their career. Tragically, this latter piece of the equation still plays out in dangerous ways, such as “missing girls” resulting from China’s one-child policy. The policy itself is troubling, but its effects also point to a broader societal challenge that women are not valued.

We have plenty to celebrate, of course. Look how far we’ve come in the U.S. — just a few generations ago, child survival was not ensured. And looking ahead, much depends on the choices we make now. Family planning is far from a silver bullet, but on so many issues, it’s a critical part of the solution. And it’s what women are asking for as they deal with challenges from poverty to climate change to political instability.

Time and time again, in country after country, history has shown that if you give women the tools to have control over their lives, the numbers will follow. They solve the “population problem” on their own. No need for laws, no force necessary. Make them healthy, make births safer, ensure their kids will live, give them access to contraception, and women opt for smaller families.

As seven billion passes, it’s easy to get caught up in numbers. But the only reason those numbers mean anything is because of the individual lives behind them. In order to make the most of this moment and all those to follow, we need to lead every conversation about numbers with rights.

Follow Suzanne Ehlers on Twitter: www.twitter.com/popact

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