Roundup: Rapid Pace of Climate Change Renews Calls for Increased Support for Family Planning
by Jodi Jacobson, Editor in Chief, RH Reality Check
September 18, 2009 - 10:25am (Print)
Concern about the pace of climate change is increasing, and so is concern about the role of population growth in driving it, reigniting or reinvigorating (depending on the viewpoint) calls for increased investment in family planning services for couples in poorer countries.
Right now, the most important factor in climate change is the high rate of individual consumption in both high and middle-income countries and in densely population countries like China and India of fossil fuels and of other activities producing green house gases. Ultimately, however, to raise living standards everywhere, we need to reduce both excessive consumption and the rate of global population growth.
Which brings in family planning.
Despite earlier progress in increasing access to basic reproductive health services, of which family planning is a core aspect, the "unmet need for family planning" remains high in many countries. (Unmet need is estimated based on the difference between the number of children women or couples say they desire versus the number they actually have. The need is "unmet" when couples are having more children then they desire but do not have access to or are not using contraception.)
Today, one in six women in the world Today, 63% of women in developing countries use a method of family planning. In 1960, that number was just 10%.Despite this dramatic increase, about one in six married women still has an unmet need for family planning: that is, she wants to postpone her next pregnancy or stop having children altogether but, for whatever reason, is not using contraception. As a consequence, 76 million women in developing countries still experience unintended pregnancies each year, and 19 million resort to unsafe abortions.
The need to increase access for couples to the range of reproductive and sexual health services including basic family planning services was reflected in a commentary in the journal The Lancet last week by Leo Bryant, a lead researcher on a World Health Organisation study on population growth and climate change.
Bryant said that the stigma attached to birth control in both developing and developed countries was hindering vital progress.
"We are certainly not advocating that governments should start telling people how many children they can have," said Bryant, an advocacy manager at the family planning group Marie Stopes International, who wrote a commentary in the Lancet medical journal on Friday.
In an interview with Reuters, Bryant also underscored the fact that:
"The ability to choose your family size...is a fundamental human right. But lack of access to family planning means millions of people in developing countries don't have that right."
Bryant's study of climate change adaptation plans by governments in the
world's 40 poorest countries showed that almost all of them link rapid
population growth to environmental impact, but only six had proposed
steps to tackle it. "Acknowledgement of the problem is widespread, but resolve to address seems to be very much a minority sport," he said.
Bryant said 200 million women across the world want contraceptives, but
cannot get them. Addressing this need would slow population growth and
reduce demographic pressure on the environment.
In most countries with good access to birth control, average family sizes shrink dramatically within a generation, he said. But policymakers in rich donor nations are wary of talking about contraception for fear of being accused of advocating draconian ideas like sterilisation or one-child policies.
The world's population is forecast to rise by one third to more than 9 billion people by 2050, with 95 percent of this growth in developing countries.
OTHER NEWS:
SEPTEMBER 18
Daily Item: Revere school board to meet on contraceptive availability
Reuters: Contraception vital in climate change fight -expert
Catholic News Agency: Baucus health care bill would fund abortions, pro-life groups say
News Tribune: Commission says no to Planned Parenthood, yes to corn maze
California Catholic Daily: Zero Success of Bishops with Pro-abort Catholics
Argus Leader: State appeals abortion ruling
Notre Dame Observer: Jenkins announces pro-life Task Force
Wall Street Journal: Health-Care Reform and the President's Faithful Helpers
SEPTEMBER 17
Catholic News Agency: Survey: 48 percent of Americans want ban on abortion funding in health care bill
FOX News: Anti-Abortion Leader Says White House Meeting Doesn't Ease Concerns
NYTimes: Religion’s Link to Teen Pregnancy
Catholic News Agency: Following Obama controversy, Notre Dame president announces pro-life initiatives
State News: Birth control coverage mandate not justifiable
Baptist Press: Baucus Senate bill at odds with Obama abortion pledge
Reuters: Obama Interrupted at University of Maryland by 'Pro life Moderate' Yelling: 'Liar!'
CBN: New Polling on Abortion and Health Care Reform
LifeNews: Latest 40 Days for Life Campaign Against Abortion Begins Nationwide Next Week
LifeSiteNews: Philippine Bishops to Create Pro-Life, Pro-Family Coalition of Lay Groups to Support Politicians
Baltimore Sun: Is Catholic Maryland complacent on abortion?
Long Island Press: When Plan A Becomes Plan B
WaPo: Fact Check: Contraception for Married Couples
BBC News: Egypt jails US 'adoption' couples
CBN: Shouldn't Pro-Choice Groups be Mad at President Obama?
SEPTEMBER 16
Truthout: Egg-as-Person State Law Campaigns Attract New Faces, Old Radicals
Follow Jodi Jacobson on Twitter, @jljacobson
We are facing a stark possibility that hundreds of millions of people, including children, are going to drown, die of thirst, hunger or exposure, or be killed in wars because the resources needed for all them to survive won't be available. Allowing people to voluntarily reduce the number of children they have is being opposed on the grounds that allowing people to make their own individual choices about family size isn't 'Pro Life'. It sure will be ironic if we manage to wipe out human civilization because some people just can't accept that quality of life sometimes trumps quantity. Of course, the tattered remnants who survive in the narrow bands of habitable land, reduced once again to primitive agriculture, will actually need large families to enable their subsistence level existence, which should please the reactionaries. If any of them are still around to care.
We could collaborate on the screenplay Crowepps. Casting would be a hoot.
Allowing people to voluntarily reduce the number of children they have is being opposed on the grounds that allowing people to make their own individual choices about family size isn't 'Pro Life'.
I don't know who's making that claim, but they don't know what they're talking about. Even in Humanae Vitae, which is the encyclical Pope Paul promulgated in 1968 banning the use of artificial contraception, there is a discussion of 'responsible parenthood' which refers to couples making sure that the size of their families doesn't increase past their means to do a good job of caring for their children.
If couples didn't overpopulate their families we probably wouldn't have to worry about the species overpopulating the planet.
Paul Bradford
Pro-Life Catholics for Choice
Can we have a scene where the heads of Big Oil and the politicians they've bought are staked out in the D.C. Tidal Basin to await the rising tide? After all, they insist that the sea level isn't rising so they should be perfectly safe.
Absolutely. And in salute to the vanishing of arable lands, we should include a "Soylent Green" segment where those PTB in denial get to eat the people that have starved.
Seems more practical to 'soylent green' the people who caused and prolonged the mess and save the starving by letting the denialists be first on the menu.
There's just enough of Us, and way too many of Them.
