Katie Bolton is PAI's summer 2008 Social Networking Intern.

Feminist Majority Foundation (FMF) president Eleanor Smeal wants women to get angry. "It's a pattern... Family planning is being cut," she declared Thursday morning at the FMF's Intern Hill Briefing, "Saving Women's Lives: The Importance of Funding for Reproductive Healthcare." And she's right. The Bush administration has systematically reduced women's access to birth control, sexually transmitted infection (STI) testing, and pre- and post-natal care both domestically and internationally since coming into power. USAID funds for reproductive health have been dramatically reduced. Birth control prices skyrocketed for students and low-income women in 2007. Nineteen million unsafe abortions are performed worldwide each year, and 68,000 women die following their unsafe abortion. In the past seven years, there have been more than 175 votes in Congress that have chipped away at our right to basic reproductive health services.

PAI is a founding member of the Caucus for Evidence-Based Prevention.

As the eyes of the public health community turn toward Mexico City, Mexico, for the XVII International AIDS Conference, HIV prevention will once again take center stage.

The Caucus for Evidence-Based Prevention--composed of  more than 50 nongovernmental organizations and their international partners meeting throughout the conference--is eager to learn from new prevention research, incorporating a breadth of biomedical, behavioral, and social interventions. The caucus was created for the specific purpose of promoting HIV prevention supported by sound science at the International AIDS Conference.

Several PAI staff attended the U.S. Global Leadership Campaign annual Tribute Dinner yesterday evening, where Defense Secretary Robert M. Gates was honored for his "leadership in support of the U.S. International Affairs Budget."  Surprisingly, in his remarks, Secretary Gates mentioned population as an important factor in countries' stability (emphasis mine):

We also know that over the next 20 years certain pressures – population, resource, energy, climate, economic, and environmental – could combine with rapid cultural, social, and technological change to produce new sources of deprivation, rage, and instability. We face now, and will inevitably face in the future, rising powers discontented with the international status quo, possessing new wealth and ambition, and seeking new and more powerful weapons. But, overall, looking ahead, I believe the most persistent and potentially dangerous threats will come less from emerging ambitious states, than from failing ones that cannot meet the basic needs – much less the aspirations – of their people.

PAI's U.S. Government Relations Team wrote this report.

On Thursday, July 10, PAI and a coalition of more than a dozen partner organizations, including the United Nations Foundation, the Centre for Development & Population Activities (CEDPA), the Communications Consortium Media Center, the Global Health Council, and the Sierra Club, joined with family planning champions Representatives Betty McCollum (D-MN) and Russ Carnahan (D-MO) to host a congressional briefing commemorating the 21st annual World Population Day.  This year’s World Population Day theme of “Plan Your Family: Plan Your Future,” highlighted the 40th anniversary of world leaders first declaring that individuals have a basic human right to freely and responsibly determine how many children to have and when to have them.   

The congressional briefing, attended by over 60 advocates and congressional staff, featured remarks by Rep. McCollum, a member of the House Appropriations Subcommittee that funds use foreign assistance; Rep. Carnahan, a member of the House Foreign Affairs Committee; Margaret Neuse, the former Director of USAID’s Office of Population & Reproductive Health; and CEDPA field partners Asih Puji Rahayu (Foundation for Mother and Child Health in Jakarta, Indonesia) and Marilyn Peri (Community Based Health Care in Papua New Guinea).  Moderated by PAI’s Vice President for Government Relations, Tod Preston, the forum provided a timely opportunity for panelists and guests to highlight the need for increasing U.S. funding for international family planning and reproductive health.

Katie Bolton is PAI's summer 2008 Social Networking Intern.

Have you been wondering when PAI would join the social networking world?  Well, wait no longer – PAI now has an expanded online presence on Facebook, MySpace, and Change.org! These profiles, in addition to our YouTube channel, will allow our supporters to interact and organize among themselves, make donations, and tell their friends about the important work PAI does. You can view all of our profiles, even if you're not a member of the social network. If you're a member, add us! If you're not yet, we hope you'll take a look at our profiles and consider signing up to support PAI.

First, stop by our Facebook fan page. You can become a fan of PAI here, share the page with your friends, write on our wall or start a discussion on the boards. We've uploaded photos of our activities around the world and video of our documentaries, including the award-winning "Finding Balance," for your perusal. If you've installed the Causes application, you can also join our cause, "Support International Family Planning!" The PAI blog is also posted on the fan page. You might never want to leave.

Karen Hardee is PAI's Vice President of Research.

Discussions of global climate change and environmental degradation are putting "population" back in the spotlight. Population stabilization has been noted by respected climate researchers, such as Brian O'Neill and PAI's Leiwen Jiang, as a potential strategy in the race to keep carbon in check (although more research is needed to determine how much it might contribute). Clearly, consumption and emissions in the West are the major contributors to global warming, but how important is population to climate change in the short and long term? Does it make any difference to the atmosphere if the world's population is six, nine or 12 billion people?

Work by Brian, Leiwen and other colleagues shows that the relationship between population and climate change is complex and that age structure, household composition and urbanization are important demographic factors, in addition to population size. Within this complexity, members of our field (broadly defined as those working on family planning, reproductive health and sexual and reproductive health and rights) are discussing the pros and cons of engaging in the discussion on population and climate change.

In her work on developing a justice framework for addressing population and environment issues, Laurie Mazur, who is currently editing a book titled Population, Justice and the Environmental Challenge, has noted that some colleagues, "even those concerned about the carrying capacity of the planet - want to silence the talk about population and the environment, for fear of what it might unleash." She called the space between the reproductive health and rights and environmental movements "something of a demilitarized zone."

Kelly McCarty is PAI's summer 2008 International Advocacy Intern.

After a month working at the office, three of PAI’s summer interns were happy to take a break from their computers to visit the Corcoran Gallery of Art.  Off we went to view its newest exhibit, Access to Life, which captured the struggles of people infected and affected by HIV/AIDS and demonstrated the life-giving power of anti-retroviral drugs (ARVs).  The exhibit is on display until July 20, 2008, and is a joint effort between Magnum Photos and the Global Fund to Fight AIDS, Tuberculosis and Malaria.

In all honesty, I went to the exhibit mainly for personal reasons.  I jumped at the chance to intern at PAI because I believe deeply in the issues for which they advocate, but I’m passionate about my thesis on the ability art has to influence politics.  I’ve spent the past year and a half poring over examples of art that sends powerful political messages.  You would think I’d be used to the power of art by now.

Allison Palser is PAI's 2008 summer communications/website intern.

This afternoon, I stopped by the Wilson Center to attend the launch of UNEP's Africa: Atlas of a Changing Environment. Due to a lengthy wait for the metro train, I arrived a few minutes late, and was immediately disappointed that I had missed lunch and had to sit in the overflow room. Crud. I knew I would have a lot of important questions, and I just love the humiliation of standing up in a crowded, climate-controlled room with a microphone. Consider it my fifteen seconds of fame. Little did I know that my spot in overflow would provide me with an interesting opportunity later on.

UNEP's Atlas is the first in an expanding project that measures visual changes in the environment as related to climate change, land degradation, deforestation, and water scarcity. The atlas used satellite imagery from the USGS LandSAT as well as from the Group on Earth Observations (GEO) group to place before and after shots of environmental changes in the hands of policymakers. For the first time, agents of government in Africa and around the world can see the process of environmental change, and, with that information, do something about it.