Maintaining Family Planning Momentum

By Amy Phillips Bursch, Media Relations Manager

Remember this little shindig in July?

Yes! The London Summit on Family Planning! It was a great opportunity to put family planning back on the world’s agenda where it belongs and make some real promises. In fact, global leaders vowed to provide 120 million of the world’s poorest women the ability to plan their families by 2020. Nice!

Of course, anytime you have a big, fancy summit like this one, it’s possible that everyone will come together, have great discussions, reach agreements, shake hands, fly home, and get sidetracked. An event Monday at the Woodrow Wilson International Center for Scholars focused on maintaining the momentum.

A huge crowd turned out – two overflow rooms were required to hold everyone. Momentum! Karen Hardee, a senior fellow at Futures Group, led the discussion. Here are a few highlights:

• Win Brown, senior program officer with the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation, said there is much agreement that family planning programs must offer quality services, promote equity, protect human rights, integrate well with other health care and be completely voluntary. He said experts are working on how to ensure that the $2.6 billion committed during the Summit has the greatest possible impact.
• Julia Bunting of the UK’s Department for International Development said that while the $2.6 billion in commitments is a huge amount, money isn’t enough. Access and delivery of contraceptive knowledge and supplies are still issues. Bunting said one of the biggest accomplishments of the Summit was to put family planning back on the world’s front burner.
• Scott Radloff, director of the Office of Population and Reproductive Health for USAID, cautioned that results won’t be instantaneous – it typically takes 20 years for countries to move from low-use to high-use of family planning. Radloff said, however, that real progress can be made in areas of Africa and South Asia, where family planning investments have long been neglected.
• Jill Sheffield, founder and president of Women Deliver and co-founder of Family Care International, was thrilled by the increased attention to family planning that the London Summit provided. “Girls and women have suffered from this neglect – if women can’t plan their fertility, they can’t plan their lives,” she said. “We can’t let the opposition control the argument.”

Amen to that!

Family Planning Needed Here, Too!

By Amy Phillips Bursch, Media Relations Manager

I have a confession to make: I’m a bit of a Grist fangirl. I really like their straightforward take on important environmental issues of our time.

Children are our future. Let's leave them a nice planet. (JD Hancock/Flickr)

I was especially happy to see Grist weigh in on contraception in the wake of last week’s London Summit on Family Planning. Their take: It’s not just developing countries that lack birth control access:  

If so many young women … are getting pregnant accidentally, then we as a country are doing something really wrong — doing lots of things wrong, actually. Sex ed in our schools is too often crappy or nonexistent. Reliable birth control can be hard to get ahold of and afford. Our whole culture is at once saturated with sex and at the same time afraid of having of having honest conversations about it. Add all that up and the result is that almost half of the nation’s 6 million-plus pregnancies each year are unintended.

Imagine if it became normal for young women in America, when they become sexually active, to start using a long-acting form a contraception — an IUD (they’re making a comeback!) or a patch or a ring or a shot, something you don’t have to think about every day — until/unless they decide they want to have kids. (Yes, they should still use condoms too.) Obama’s healthcare act will help make this more achievable; starting this August, most insurance plans will be required to cover the full cost of birth control. But it’ll take more than changing the rules; we need to change the culture too.

CAN I GET AN AMEN?!!

Currently, there are 222 million women in developing countries who want to delay or end childbearing but who don’t have modern, appropriate contraception. It’s a HUGE problem – for the women, their families, their nations, and the planet. But this Grist post makes an important point – women right here, in our own communities and neighborhoods, also lack access to contraception. That access is crucial if women are able to choose their own futures.

(That’s one of the reasons that I, personally, was so happy about Obama Administration’s rule on contraception, but that’s a post for another time.)

One issue Grist didn’t mention: Those millions of (unintended) American kids also have a big impact on our environment. Americans produce more trash per person than anyone else on Earth. We also use more energy per person than anyone else. We’re No. 1! We’re No. 1!

P.S. No, I don’t hate children. I have seven nieces and nephews under age 6 whom I adore. I just want the best possible life for all kids for generations to come, and that won’t happen if we run out of resources first.

As Charlie Brown Would Say, "AAUGH!"

By Amy Phillips Bursch, Media Relations Manager

Yesterday was World Population Day. ( It was also Free Slurpee Day, but that’s the subject for another post on another blog.)

Maybe it should also be called Opposites Day. Or Smacking My Forehead in Frustration Day.

On one side of the Atlantic, we had awesome news. At the London Summit on Family Planning, an amazing $2.6 BILLION was pledged to help expand contraception access to 120 million women and girls in the world’s poorest countries who want to end or delay childbearing. “It will be a breakthrough that will transform lives,” said Andrew Mitchell, UK international development secretary. We agree! Snoopy Dance!

Snoopy ain’t dancing on this side of the Atlantic.

Charlie and Snoopy chilling in a St. Paul Park. (Deadly Tedly/Flickr)

Once again – for the 30^th or so time – the House voted to repeal the despised “Obamacare.” You know, the historic health care reform law that has come under fire in part for – THE HORROR! – requiring that insurers cover contraception. Covering birth control is one way that the Affordable Care Act is taking steps to ensure women don’t pay more for basic health care than men do.

So on one side of the Pond, we took a huge step forward in ensuring that women have access to the family planning resources they want. On our side of the Pond, we took a huge symbolic step backward.

How discouraging. Where’s Lucy Van Pelt when you need her?