Nicholas Kristof wrote a column pointing to high desired family size in countries he was visiting in Africa, which you can read here: http://www.nytimes.com/2010/05/20/opinion

Below is his blog on this subject.
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BLOG: Is Consensus Possible on Birth Control?
Date: Thursday, May 20, 2010
Source: The New York Times (U.S.)
Author: NICHOLAS KRISTOF

My column today is about the need for birth control as a key to fighting poverty. In short: let’s make contraception as available as sex. Here are a few extra thoughts I didn’t have space to address.
First, all the numbers on a subject like this are dubious. The U.N. or research groups put out nice reports with figures for all kinds of things, and I sometimes worry that they imply a false precision. The truth is we have very little idea of some of these numbers. For example, the WHO studies have suggested that well over half a million women die each year from pregnancy complications, while a new Lancet study put the number at about 350,000. We don’t know which is right, because nobody really keeps track of women who die in poor parts of the world.
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Contraception is a “best buy” for development. The policy brief located below highlights five “next generation” contraceptives, each of which offers one or more advantages over similar earlier methods. These innovations are among those expected to enter the market within five years.

Contraceptive Choice (PDF, 272 KB)

As the world focuses on the global economic crisis, one of the most trusted, most cost-effective and proven poverty-reduction interventions is in danger of marginalization and neglect, according to a new report. The measure is contraceptive services.

Released to coincide with World Population Day, observed worldwide throughout July, the report, Contraceptives at a Crossroads: Averting a Global Contraceptive Crisis by the International Planned Parenthood Federation described systemic problems that bar individuals and couples from access to reproductive health supplies such as contraception and condoms.

For full article, visit:
http://www.peopleandplanet.net/doc.php%3Fid=3600.html

Opposition to contraception is hurting the Philippines. Each year, more than half of the 3.4 million pregnancies in the country are unplanned, resulting in high costs to women, their families and the national health care system. In addition, this very high rate of unintended pregnancy is impeding the Philippine’s development goals.

Yet this is not an epidemic for which there is no known solution. Unintended pregnancies are highly preventable if women have access to voluntary family planning information and services, particularly modern methods of contraception.

For full article, visit:
http://www.abs-cbnnews.com/views-and-analysis

Ask 46-year-old Erlinda Cristobal (real name concealed by request) how many children she has.
“Ten,” she said.

“But I was supposed to have only six,” she snapped in a breath.

After the sixth pregnancy, Cristobal decided that she and her husband, a casual laborer who earns an average of four dollars a day, should not have any more children.

“My husband doesn’t have a stable job. There are days when we don’t eat so that our children can,” she told Xinhua in an interview near her residence in Manila.

For full article, visit:
http://www.philstar.com/Article.aspx?articleId=461829&publicationSubCategoryId=200

PMC was recently featured in Earth Island Journal
http://www.earthisland.org/journal/index.php/eij/article/sex_sells/

Sex Sells: A Tiny Nonprofit Uses Mass Media to Encourage Family Planning

Fikrite is a girl in trouble. Her grandfather has just died and now a neighbor, a man named Damte, has taken over the house and is trying to turn the place into a bar and brothel. Fikrite says she won’t allow it, so Damte starts spreading rumors about the girl and soon everyone, including her boyfriend, thinks that she is hiding a child born out of wedlock. Damte then seduces Fikrite’s stepsister, Lamrot, gets her hooked on booze and drugs, and knocks her up. When Lamrot tries to abort the pregnancy, she almost bleeds to death and lands in the hospital, where she finds out that she is HIV-positive.

If this sounds like overcooked melodrama – well, that’s the point. The story comes from “Yeken Kignit” (“Looking Over One’s Life”), a radio soap opera that gripped much of Ethiopia for 257 episodes beginning in 2002. The show had all of the elements that make serial dramas popular: sex, romance, mischief, betrayal, suspense. But the wildly successful program – which reached more than one half of Ethiopian adults during its two-year run and sparked a craze for naming baby girls Fikrite – wasn’t designed just for entertainment. Produced by a small US organization called the Population Media Center (PMC), the show was written with the express purpose of encouraging family planning, women’s empowerment, and HIV/AIDS awareness. Not all the listeners knew this, however, and that was also the point.
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Thanks to Vicky Markham for this letter published by the New York Times.
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There are many advantages to President Obama’s recent actions on family planning: They will help women of all incomes control their fertility. They will provide better education, economic, resource-use and family-raising opportunities. And they will help prevent abortions and unwanted pregnancies.

For full article, visit:
http://www.nytimes.com/2009/03/28/opinion/lweb28family.html?_r=2&ref=opinion

A debate is stirring in the predominantly Roman Catholic country of the Philippines: should the government provide contraceptives to the public?

More than 100 members of the House of Representatives have co-authored a bill that would allow government funds to be used to promote artificial contraceptives — which is now prohibited in the Southeast Asian nation.

For full article, visit:
http://www.cnn.com/2009/WORLD/asiapcf/02/08/philippinesa>

Pakistan’s rapidly increasing population is placing severe strains on economic resources, development and security, say experts who are urgently calling for more effective family planning.

“The population challenge is the biggest threat facing Pakistan,” said Farid Midhet from the Safe Motherhood Pakistan Alliance. “Imagine a Pakistan with nearly 300 million people!”

For full article, visit:
http://www.irinnews.org/Report.aspx?ReportId=82215

Thanks to Kathleen Mogelgaard, Senior Program Manager for Population and Climate Change at Population Action International for this article from PAI’s blog.
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“We farmers don’t have access to family planning and we are moving more and more into poverty.”

As the world focuses on the outcomes of the meeting on climate change that just concluded in Poznan, Poland, I am sitting in a workshop in Nazret, Ethiopia, listening to a panel of farmers talking about the effects of climate change on their lives – less rain, lower crop yields, malaria, no milk for their children. The farmers, from Amhara Region in the Rift Valley, talked about population pressure. They are acutely aware that farm sizes shrink with each generation and speak eloquently of the need for access to family planning so they can have fewer children. Rural Ethiopians currently have an average of six children.

For full article, visit:
http://www.populationaction.org/blog/2008/12