Empowering Women - Family Planning

A major problem worldwide is the lack of a voice in women.  I wanted to talk about Half The Sky Movement which is an organization that cutting across platforms to ignite the change needed to put an end to the oppression of women and girls worldwide, the defining issue of our time.  It is inspired by journalists Nicholas Kristof and Sheryl WuDunn's book which has the same name, Half the Sky: Turning Oppression into Opportunity for Women Worldwide.  It brings together video, websites, games, blogs, and other educational tools to not only raise awareness of women's issues, but to also provide concrete steps to fight these problems and empower women.  change is possible, and you can be part of the solution.

Be an advocate, use your voice, speak up, and make a difference.  It is easy.  See the Quick Action Guide in order to see what you can do in the next 10 minutes.  

One thing that they talk a lot about in the book is safe and effective family planning methods.  Family planning is often used as a synonym for 'birth control,' but it is much more than that.  It includes contraceptives, sex education, and natural family planning techniques.  The purpose of family planning efforts is to prevent pregnancy-related health risks in women, reduce infant and maternal mortality, help prevent HIV/AIDS & other STIs, empower people and enhance education, reduce adolescent pregnancies, and slow population growth.

Contraceptives 
The problem with contraceptive use is that there are just so many barriers to overcome.  Whether it is religious beliefs, personal beliefs, fear, side effects, access, etc.  The problem is that the positives aren't highlighted.  Birth control reduces health risks by delaying first pregnancies, which carry higher risks in very young women; cutting down on unsafe abortions, which account for 13 percent of all maternal deaths in developing countries; and controlling dangers associated with pregnancies that are too closely spaced.  When you hear stories of pregnant mothers that have birth after birth, risk mounts and the possibility of an extended (8 hour or more) pregnancy can result in maternal and infant deaths, or fistula.  The Fistula Foundation is very important in several low income countries whose women suffer from this devastating medical issue.  The main thing to know about contraceptives is that all birth control methods have a failure rate—even sterilization. Unless your method is abstinence, there’s always a possibility that heterosexual sex could result in pregnancy. But the risk of failure per year is less than 1% for many methods, as opposed to the 85% chance of pregnancy if you don’t use birth control.

Birth Spacing & Family Planning
The major emphasis over the last few decades in reducing maternal mortality has been to decrease the total number of pregnancies per woman through family planning; there has been a drop in the total number of pregnancies per woman and this is responsible for the decrease in the lifetime risk of maternal mortality.  Unintended pregnancies increase the lifetime risk of maternal mortality by increasing the number of pregnancies.

Need for Family Planning

The State of World Population 2012, says that at least 200-million women want to use safe and effective family planning methods but can not, either because they are not available or because social attitudes prevent it.  The need for voluntary family planning is growing fast, and it is estimated that the 'unmet need' will grow by 40 per cent during the next 15 years.

Finances

Since parents are responsible for providing education, shelter, clothing and food for their children, family planning has an important long-term impact on the financial situation of any family.   Family planning has a positive multiplier effect on development. Not only does the ability for a couple to choose when and how many children to have help lift nations out of poverty, but it is also one of the most effective means of empowering women.

Population Control

John D. Rockefeller, III said: In the long run no substantial benefits will result from further growth of the nation’s population. Rather, population growth is an intensifier and multiplier of many problems: environmental, social, political, economic.  Population control is important because ecologists believe that the world population will continue to grow until the quality of life has been degraded for all.

Abortions

More than 50 million of the 190 million women who become pregnant each year have abortions. Many of these are clandestine and performed under unsafe conditions.  Every year, an estimated 74,000 women die as the result of unsafe abortions.

Maternal Mortality

WHO estimates that 1/2 million maternal deaths occur each year, 99% of which are in developing countries.A new study by researchers at Johns Hopkins University shows that fulfilling unmet contraception demand by women in developing countries could reduce global maternal mortality by nearly a third, a potentially great improvement for one of the world’s most vulnerable populations.  The authors of the Lancet study, researchers at the Bloomberg School of Public Health at Johns Hopkins, found that the number of maternal deaths in those countries in 2008 would have nearly doubled without contraception.