Iran Turns Back Clock on Women

By John Seager, President, Population Connection

While many Iranian policies are worthy of criticism, its system of health clinics, free contraception access and premarital education has been a model for other nations and proof that small families can be achieved in an Islamic nation.

Unfortunately, Iran’s leadership just did a U turn.

Iran’s health ministry this month confirmed that it has ended family planning funding. Iran has about 75 million citizens. Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei wants more than twice that – 150 to 200 million. Women are being urged to have more children for the good of the nation.

Women's literacy doubled and maternal mortality dropped under Iran's system of family planning. (Alireza Teimoury/Flickr)

Will abandoning family planning be good for Iran? No.

Whether it’s in Iran or Illinois, contraception saves lives. According to the United Nations Population Fund, expanded access to modern family planning could prevent up to 40 percent of maternal deaths in the world. The leading cause of death for women age 15-19 in the developing world is pregnancy, and adolescents are twice as likely to die in childbirth as women in their 20s.

Family planning has worked in Iran. Maternal mortality has plummeted.

A new Iranian baby boom wouldn’t just hurt women. It would also put enormous pressure on the environment. Iran is suffering from severe drought. The nation is draining its aquifers at such a fast rate, theground is sinking and buildings are cracking in some areas. Between 1971 and 2001, the water table dropped 50 feet. More people require more water, and Iran is already running dangerously short.

There are geopolitical concerns, too. Most of the world’s civil conflicts in the past 40 years have happened in nations with young and fast-growing populations. These “youth bulges” can lead to social breakdown. If economies are weak and unable to provide education, jobs and the possibility of a bright future, societies can become unstable.  

So does the end of government-sanctioned family planning programs doom Iran to a future of higher mortality, environmental degradation and instability? It depends. Will women still be able to access contraception? Will affluent Iranians buy birth control while poor families can’t? Will Iranian women put aside their own desires and start having babies out of devotion to their country?

The Iranian government’s original goal was to reduce family size from nearly seven children per woman in the 1980s to four births per woman by 2011. Today, it’s around 1.6. The literacy rate for women has almost doubled. Iranians are marrying later. Many women are working outside the home, providing extra income for their families.

Iranian women aren’t any different than women in America or anywhere else. They want to choose their own path. They don’t want to be forced into early marriages and mandatory motherhood. They’re educated. And when women are empowered through education, they invariably choose to invest their energy in smaller, healthier families.

Regardless of what the clerics think, that’s good news for Iranian women, their families and the planet we all share. Here’s hoping personal choice and reason wins out.

John Seager is president of Population Connection, America’s largest grassroots population organization.

Hey "Pro-Lifers": Family Planning Saves Lives. So Why Oppose It?

By Amy Phillips Bursch, Media Relations Manager

 

This is one thing I’ll never, ever understand: Family planning saves lives. Family planning prevents unplanned pregnancies. No unplanned pregnancies equals way fewer abortions. So why aren’t the hard-core “pro-lifers” in favor of family planning?

There are plenty of reasonable people out there who oppose a woman’s right to choose but fully support family planning, of course. I’m not talking about them. I’m talking about the activists and organizations who think abstinence is the only acceptable option to prevent pregnancy. That’s unrealistic, and it hurts women, infants and families. How? Here are some facts:

Family planning helps women -- and their children. (Legends2K/Flickr)

• A U.S. Agency for International Development (USAID) analysis found that if moms waited three years between pregnancies to have another baby, 1.6 million infant and child deaths could be prevented every year.
• The Guttmacher Institute estimates that in 2012, 291,000 women in developing nations will die from pregnancy-related causes. At least 104,000 of those women didn’t want to be pregnant in the first place.
• According to the World Health Organization (WHO), women under 20 are significantly more likely to die after giving birth than are women ages 20-29. Family planning allows younger women to wait to have children when their bodies can better handle pregnancy.
• The United Nations Population Fund (UNFPA) reports that babies of mothers who die are more likely to die themselves.
• A Guttmacher Institute analysis found that family planning (at current levels) prevents 138 million abortions – including 40 million unsafe ones – each year in developing countries. An additional 26 million abortions (16 million unsafe) would be prevented if women who want to avoid pregnancy but don’t have modern methods of contraception had them.
• Unsafe abortions account for 13% of maternal deaths around the world, according to the WHO. I think it’s safe to say that practically none of those women would have died from unsafe abortion if they hadn’t been pregnant in the first place.

But some “pro-life” organizations can’t be persuaded. The “personhood” people want fertilized eggs to be given all the rights of full-grown humans, making the most effective forms of contraception illegal. Personhood USA on Wednesday sent out a tweet saying that “The lie: birth control prevents pregnancy. The truth: most will get pregnant & ‘need’ an abortion.” I guess infertile couples should use contraception, then?

The American Life League actively promotes the falsehood that the “Pill Kills Babies.”  A new group, 1Flesh, has also jumped on the "pill kills" bandwagon, and OneMore Soul says “an openness towards having children yields specific medicalbenefits.” (Huh?)

Justice for All’s handbook, “Abortion: From Debate to Dialogue,” says birth control pills are “as if the child entering the uterus is looking for his camping spot and finds “NO CAMPING!” signs … he dies from lack of nutrition and hydration.” It also says that “since self-control seems to be the root cause of unwanted pregnancies, why not focus our efforts on teaching people how to be abstinent”? I’m sure married couples who don’t wish to become pregnant will find that suggestion just peachy.

It's worth repeating: Family planning saves lives. Family planning prevents abortions. Family planning helps gives women power over their own futures. 

You really want to oppose all of that, "pro-lifers"? Really? REALLY?

Philippines Family Planning Fight

By Amy Phillips Bursch, Media Relations Manager

 

Oh Vatican.

For an organization that does a huge amount of good (nuns advocating for poor people, for example), the Catholic Church sure can gum up the works on what should be noncontroversial reproductive health issues.

(Disclosure: I used to be a practicing Catholic. My husband and I planned on getting married in the church. But after 40 hours of premarital education – including a “natural family planning” seminar – we were told to leave if we didn’t agree with all of their stances. So we did.)

The latest front in the Vatican-fueled culture war is in the Philippines. You see, the Philippines has a big problem: Dying women. In fact, its maternal mortality rates have skyrocketed – from 162 deaths per 100,000 in 2006 to 221 per 100,000 in 2011. Not good.

What’s one of the best ways to cut maternal mortality? Make sure women only get pregnant when they want to. So the Philippines hopes to invest about $12 million in contraception this year.

 Basilica of the Immaculate Conception, Manila (Salim Photography)

Hope is the operative word here. The Catholic Church – an extremely powerful force in a nation that’s more than 80% Catholic – is in the midst of an intense lobbying campaign to kill a reproductive health care bill that would allocate money for contraceptives and provide sex education for the nation’s children. The church’s objections all center around one argument: Contraception is immoral. You know the drill.

So the Vatican will keep derailing reproductive rights, and fighting against insurance coverage of contraception. Meanwhile, the women of the Philippines are suffering:

"The statistics and acronyms mean little to women like Irish Gili, 31, a mother of eight who had just delivered her latest baby at Fabella (Hospital). She has never had access to family planning advice, much less free contraceptives. She nearly died while delivering her seventh child, but found herself pregnant again, barely a month after giving birth."