The following article is from the Christian Science Monitor and reports on a drop from the most recent “peak births” moment in the United States (4.3 million in 2007). Not unusually, the article masters a subtle misleading as to overall direction of U.S. population. The article also throws in some aging population and economic growth fears at the end for good measure. But there does seem to be some good news on teenage pregnancy.

Babies? Not in this economy. US birth rates plummet for fourth year

Birthrates have been declining for the past four years, according to a government report on Wednesday. It’s a new phenomenon for a country with rising populations rates since the 1990s.

See: http://www.csmonitor.com/The-Culture/Family/2012/1004/Babies-Not-in-this-economy.-US-birth-rates-plummet-for-fourth-year

U.S. births fell for the fourth year in a row, the government reported Wednesday, with experts calling it more proof that the weak economy has continued to dampen enthusiasm for having children.

But the decline in 2011 was just 1 percent – not as sharp a fall-off as the 2 to 3 percent drop seen in recent years.

“It may be that the effect of the recession is slowly coming to an end,” said Carl Haub, a senior demographer with the Population Reference Bureau, a research organization.

Most striking were steep declines in Hispanic birth rates and a new low in teen births. Hispanics have been disproportionately affected by the poor economy, experts say, and teen birth rates have been falling for 20 years.

Falling births is a relatively new phenomenon in the U.S. Births had been on the rise since the late 1990s and hit an all-time high of more than 4.3 million in 2007.

But fewer than 4 million births were counted last year – the lowest number since 1998.

The economy officially was in a recession from December 2007 until June 2009. But well into 2011, polls show most Americans remained gloomy, citing anemic hiring, a depressed housing market and other factors.

The report by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention is a first glimpse at 2011 birth certificate data from state health departments.

Early data for 2012 is not yet available, and it’s too soon to guess whether the birth decline will change, said the CDC’s Stephanie Ventura, one of the study’s authors.

To read the full report, please click here: http://www.csmonitor.com/The-Culture/Family/2012/1004/Babies-Not-in-this-economy.-US-birth-rates-plummet-for-fourth-year

ICLEI Releases First National Standard for Measuring a Community’s Carbon Footprint

See: http://www.heraldonline.com/2012/10/04/4313141/iclei-releases-first-national.html

Long-awaited protocol standardizes guidance for how U.S. local governments can measure the greenhouse gas emissions associated with their communities; sets stage to accelerate climate progress of cities and counties
Today the first-ever national standard for how to measure the greenhouse gas emissions associated with communities was released by ICLEI-Local Governments for Sustainability USA (ICLEI USA). The U.S. Community Protocol for Accounting and Reporting of Greenhouse Gas Emissions (Community Protocol) changes the game for U.S. cities and counties. It is a much-needed resource to help more local governments reduce their communities’ carbon emissions.

The Community Protocol simplifies and standardizes the technical guidance necessary to complete a greenhouse gas inventory. This allows local governments to gain a clearer understanding of which sources and activities within their communities-from power generation and passenger vehicles to livestock and solid waste treatment-are most responsible for the greenhouse gases driving climate change.

A Major Step Forward for Cities and Counties “The Community Protocol fills a void for local governments and resolves longstanding confusion on GHG reporting,” said Michael Schmitz, ICLEI USA Executive Director. “With a consistent standard in place, local governments can more clearly measure and report carbon emissions, evaluate climate progress, and compare results.

Cities and counties are already the national leaders on climate action. This national standard will make it easier for even more local governments to get started on actions to lower their emissions.”

To read the full release, please click here: http://www.heraldonline.com/2012/10/04/4313141/iclei-releases-first-national.html

Child Bride Practice Rising In Iran, Parliament Seeks To Lower Girl’s Legal Marriage Age To 9
See: http://www.ibtimes.com/child-bride-practice-rising-iran-parliament-seeks-lower-girls-legal-marriage-age-9-760263

Hundreds of girls below the age of 10 each year are forced into marriage in Iran every year — and the trend is experiencing a dramatic increase.

According to recent data released by Iran’s Association of Children’s Rights, the number of girls married in Iran under the age of 15 went from 33,383 in 2006 to 43,459 in 2009, a 30 percent increase in three years.

In addition, while 449 girls were married in 2009 before reaching the age of 10, as many as 716 girls were married under the age of 10 in 2010, a 59 percent spike in one year.

These alarming figures were accompanied by an official statement from the Iranian parliament’s legal affairs committee that the Islamic Republic will push to lower the legal marriage for girls to 9 (before they even reach puberty) from the current 13.

The legal affairs committee of parliament told the press that they regard the law that prohibits girls below the age of 10 from being married off to be “un-Islamic and illegal,” referencing Islamic scripture to which describes the Prophet Muhammad — the perfect example of all Muslims — marrying a six-year-old bride, with whom he consummated the marriage when she was only nine years old.

Mohammad Ali Isfenani, the chairman for the legal affairs committee, said matter-of-factly: “As some people may not comply with our current Islamic legal system, we must regard 9 as being the appropriate age for a girl to have reached puberty and qualified to get married. To do otherwise would be to contradict and challenge Islamic Sharia law.”

To read the full article, please click here: http://www.ibtimes.com/child-bride-practice-rising-iran-parliament-seeks-lower-girls-legal-marriage-age-9-760263

The following are excerpts from the website of Catholics for Choice. To read the full article, please click through to the link below.

Religious Extremism Cloaked in Diplomacy
See: http://www.catholicsforchoice.org/conscience/current/HolySeeatUN.asp

Over the last 20 years, the Holy See has played an increasingly destructive role at the United Nations. Diplomats, policymakers and advocates alike have drawn attention to this role, but no solution has been forthcoming. The tension arises from the Holy See’s claim to statehood, which grants it special status at the UN, and its dogmatic views on the provision of reproductive healthcare services and the family—views that place it squarely in the way of policymakers who wish to guarantee rights and provide services to people around the world. While the debate about the Holy See’s status at the UN is not new, a resolution is available to those with the political and diplomatic will to seek it…

…The Holy See’s impact has been most painfully felt in the area of reproductive health, where it has used its prestige and resources to stymie attempts at the United Nations, state and local levels to provide comprehensive reproductive healthcare services. Often cloaked in language that seems to respect women’s needs, these obstruction tactics accomplish the exact opposite—without access to abortion, contraception and other basic services people die, and value systems that undermine women’s well-being are fostered. Policy resolutions that have been weakened by the Holy See’s objections flow into other legislative bodies as well. Dana Rosemary Scallon, a former member of the European Parliament, said in 2002 that the EU adopted language about reproductive health that made no reference to abor¬tion because of the UN Programme of Action the Holy See helped shape in 1994…

…Where the 1995 Beijing Declaration pledged to ensure the rights of women and girls as “inalienable,” the Holy See rejected this very premise, saying, “Surely this international gathering could have done more for women and girls than to leave them alone with their rights!”

The Holy See in Action: Doctrine and Division

The Holy See goes to great lengths to insert itself into UN processes dealing with reproductive health precisely so that women are not left alone with these basic rights. In 1994 the Vatican sent special envoys to Tehran and Tripoli to drum up support for the Holy See’s planned anti-reproductive rights stance at the forthcoming International Conference on Population and Development in Cairo—a collaboration with radical regimes that Washington Post columnist Jim Hoagland likened to “sup[ping] with the devil.” Pope John Paul II also sent letters to every head of state worldwide warning that the wrong policy decisions at the conference could bring about an impending “moral decline resulting in a serious setback for humanity.”

To read the full article, please click here: http://www.catholicsforchoice.org/conscience/current/HolySeeatUN.asp

Met Office facing legal action over pessimistic forecasts
Tourist attraction threatens to sue Met Office over pessimistic weather forecasts.

See: http://www.telegraph.co.uk/topics/weather/9583715/Met-Office-facing-legal-action-over-pessimistic-forecasts.html

Here, we return to the Philippines, for an update on the struggle to pass the RH Bill in that country.

Philippines takes on Catholic church to push birth control, sex education

See: http://worldnews.nbcnews.com/_news/2012/10/03/14194262-philippines-takes-on-catholic-church-to-push-birth-control-sex-education?lite
By Karen Lema, Reuters

MANILA, Philippines — Philippine President Benigno Aquino is squaring off against his country’s powerful Catholic church in a bid to give people free access to the means to limit the size of their families. The predominately Catholic country has one of Asia’s fastest-growing populations together with significant levels of chronic poverty. While neighbors have accelerated towards prosperity, the Philippines has lagged.

Economists say high population growth is a primary factor for that, but the church disagrees. It says population growth is not a cause of poverty and that people need jobs, not contraception. Aquino, a Catholic like 80 percent of the population, has thrown his support behind a reproductive health bill that will, if passed by the two houses of Congress, guarantee access to free birth control and promote sex education.

That’s something that Liza Cabiya-an might have benefited from, if she’d had the opportunity. Cabiya-an, 39, has 14 children. The oldest is 22, the youngest just 11 months. Their home is a hut in a Manila slum.

“It’s tough when you have so many children,” said Cabiya-an, a shy smile revealing poor teeth. “I have to count them before I go to sleep to make sure no one’s missing.”

At one time Cabiya-an had access to contraception but Manila mayor Jose Atienza, a devout Catholic, swept contraceptives from the shelves of city-run clinics in 2000. After that, Cabiya-an’s efforts to limit the size of her family were patchy, restricted by her meager resources. She went on and off the pill and resorted to an illegal abortion more than once.

To read the full story, please click here: http://worldnews.nbcnews.com/_news/2012/10/03/14194262-philippines-takes-on-catholic-church-to-push-birth-control-sex-education?lite

The following article was published by The Wilson Center’s New Security Beat blog. It reports on a study published in the August issue of Nature Magazine. Titled “Water balance of global aquifers revealed by groundwater footprint” the Nature study’s abstract mentions that “...humans are over-exploiting groundwater in many large aquifers that are critical to agriculture, especially in Asia and North America. We estimate that the size of the global groundwater footprint is currently about 3.5 times the actual area of aquifers and that about 1.7 billion people live in areas where groundwater resources and/or groundwater-dependent ecosystems are under threat. That said, 80 per cent of aquifers have a groundwater footprint that is less than their area, meaning that the net global value is driven by a few heavily over-exploited aquifers.”

If you are especially interested in the graphics, I suggest clicking through to the New Security blog, where you can view higher resolution pictures.

Stress Levels of Major Global Aquifers Revealed by Groundwater Footprint Study

See: http://www.newsecuritybeat.org/2012/08/stress-levels-major-global-aquifers-revealed-groundwater-footprint-study/

In the “first spatially explicit comparison of groundwater use, availability, and environmental flow for aquifers globally,” a new article in Nature finds that the “size of the global groundwater footprint is currently about 3.5 times the actual area of aquifers.” An aquifer’s footprint is the theoretical size it would need to be to sustainably support use at its current rate, so groundwater footprints being much larger than their corresponding aquifers is a sign of overuse.

Authors Tom Gleeson, Yoshihide Wada, Marc F. P. Bierkens, and Ludovicus P. H. van Beek used the Global Groundwater Information System and a recharge model to calculate the global rate of water use compared to water available in aquifers. They particularly highlight overuse in six major aquifers: the Western Mexico, High Plains, North Arabian, Persian, Upper Ganges, and North China Plain.

Some aquifers are replenishable, like many in India, for example, but are being refilled more slowly than they are being drained. Others – called “fossil aquifers” – are not, like the Ogallala aquifer in the midwestern United States and the Sana’a Basin in Yemen. Geological changes mean that streams streams which once deposited water no longer reach them. Once water is depleted from the fossil aquifers, farmers must turn to other forms of irrigation or cease agricultural production altogether. Even before aquifers run dry, falling water tables increase the cost of irrigation by forcing farmers to drill deeper and deeper for access to water.

To read the full article, please click here: http://www.newsecuritybeat.org/2012/08/stress-levels-major-global-aquifers-revealed-groundwater-footprint-study/

NEW STUDY CONFIRMS WHAT MANY HAVE LONG BELIEVED TO BE TRUE: WOMEN USE CONTRACEPTION TO BETTER ACHIEVE THEIR LIFE GOALS

See:  http://www.guttmacher.org/media/nr/2012/09/25/index.html

The full report is available here (PDF):   http://www.guttmacher.org/pubs/journals/j.contraception.2012.08.012.pdf

New evidence confirms what most people already believe: Women use contraception because it allows them to better care for themselves and their families, complete their education and achieve economic security, according to “Reasons for Using Contraception: Perspectives of U.S. Women Seeking Care at Specialized Family Planning Clinics,” by Jennifer Frost and Laura Lindberg of the Guttmacher Institute.

“Women value the ability to plan their childbearing, and view doing so as critical to being able to achieve their life goals,” says study author Laura Lindberg. “They need continued access to a wide range of contraceptives so they can plan their families and determine when they are ready to have children.”

Few studies in the United States have asked women directly why they use contraception and what benefits they expect or have achieved from its use. To fill this gap, the authors surveyed 2,094 women receiving services at 22 family planning clinics nationwide.

The majority of participants reported that contraception has had a significant impact on their lives, allowing them to take better care of themselves or their families (63%), support themselves financially (56%), complete their education (51%), or keep or get a job (50%).

When asked why they are seeking contraceptive services now, women expressed concerns about the consequences of an unintended pregnancy on their families’ and their own lives. The single most frequently cited reason for using contraception was that women could not afford to take care of a baby at that time (65%). Nearly one in four women reported that they or their partners were unemployed, which was a very important reason for their contraceptive use. Among women with children, nearly all reported that their desire to care for their current children was a reason for contraceptive use.

Many women reported interrelated reasons for using contraception, suggesting that the complexities of women’s lives influence their decision to use contraception and their choice of method. Other reasons for using contraception, reported by a majority of respondents, include not being ready to have children (63%), feeling that using birth control gives them better control over their lives (60%) and wanting to wait until their lives are more stable to have a baby (60%).

These findings point to the critical role of contraception in the lives of women and their families, and further documents the value of ensuring women’s continued and increased access to a full range of contraceptive services and methods.

Click here to read the full article: http://www.guttmacher.org/media/nr/2012/09/25/index.html

In 2011, Texas cut funding for family planning services by 2/3rds — from $111 million to $37.9 million for a 2-year period. The article was published in The New England Journal of Medicine. If you are interested in the references, please click through the link.

Cutting Family Planning in Texas

Kari White, Ph.D., Daniel Grossman, M.D., Kristine Hopkins, Ph.D., and Joseph E. Potter, Ph.D.

N Engl J Med 2012; 367:1179-1181September 27, 2012

http://www.nejm.org/doi/full/10.1056/NEJMp1207920

Four fundamental principles drive public funding for family planning. First, unintended pregnancy is associated with negative health consequences, including reduced use of prenatal care, lower breast-feeding rates, and poor maternal and neonatal outcomes.1,2 Second, governments realize substantial cost savings by investing in family planning, which reduces the rate of unintended pregnancies and the costs of prenatal, delivery, postpartum, and infant care.3 Third, all Americans have the right to choose the timing and number of their children. And fourth, family planning enables women to attain their educational and career goals and families to provide for their children. These principles led to the bipartisan passage of Title X in 1970 and later to other federal- and state-funded programs supporting family planning services for low-income women.

Despite the demonstrated positive effects of these programs, political support and funding for them have begun to erode. Recently, efforts to expand access to contraception through the Affordable Care Act ignited a broad debate regarding the proper role of government in this sphere, and proposals have been put forth to eliminate Title X.

Several states have already taken substantial steps to reduce public funding for family planning and other reproductive health services. In 2011, Texas enacted the most radical legislation to date, cutting funding for family planning services by two thirds – from $111 million to $37.9 million for the 2-year period. The remaining funds were allocated through a three-tiered priority system, with organizations that provide comprehensive primary care taking precedence over those providing only family planning services.

The Texas legislature also imposed new restrictions on abortion care and reauthorized the exclusion of organizations affiliated with abortion providers from participation in the state Medicaid waiver program, the Women’s Health Program (WHP), which was due for renewal in January 2012. Although the exclusion had not previously been enforced by the state Health and Human Services Commission, it runs contrary to federal policy, and the renewal of the WHP was declined by the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services. In 2010, the WHP provided services to nearly 106,000 women 18 years of age or older with incomes below 185% of the federal poverty level who had been legal residents of Texas for at least 5 years. Almost half of these women were served at Planned Parenthood clinics.

To read the full article, click here: http://www.nejm.org/doi/full/10.1056/NEJMp1207920

Congratulations to Jenny Goldie for publication of the following Op-Ed on the News.com website in Australia. Jenny points out that, despite the vigorous public debate in Australia about the merits of slowing down and stopping population growth as soon as possible, the actual numerical reality for the land down under is that they are headed back towards rapid growth.

We seem to be hurtling down the path towards an out-sized Australia

See: http://www.news.com.au/news/we-seem-to-be-hurtling-down-the-path-towards-an-out-sized-australia/story-fnepjsb4-1226483691804#ixzz27ntkFqmt

In June 2010, Prime Minister Julia Gillard famously said: “Australia should not hurtle down the track towards a big population.”

She was distancing herself from her  predecessor Kevin Rudd, who had famously said on ABC TV’s 7.30 Report that he believed in a “Big Australia”, of 36 million by 2050.

Ms Gillard then indicated she would be putting the brakes on immigration. “We need to stop, take a breath and develop policies for a sustainable Australia.”

Bravo Julia, we said at the time.

Figures just released by the Australian Bureau of Statistics (ABS) tor the year ending March 2012, however, suggest that we are indeed hurtling down the track to a Big Australia.

The overall population growth rate of 1.5 per cent is up from 1.4 per cent. The increase is largely due to a rise in net overseas migration, 197,200 people -18 per cent higher than that for March 2011.

So much for putting the brakes on immigration.

Australia’s population increased by 331,200 people in one year to reach 22.6 million people in March – the 23 million milestone will be reached later this year. This was the figure that the Academy of Science agreed in 1994 was a safe upper limit for Australia’s population. Given we are now growing by a million people every three years, we will only be enjoying that ‘safe upper limit’ until 2015.

But we have probably exceeded it already. The State of Environment report that was tabled in the Australian Parliament last December, painted a bleak picture and cited population growth as a driver of environmental decline.

To read the full essay, please click here: http://www.news.com.au/news/we-seem-to-be-hurtling-down-the-path-towards-an-out-sized-australia/story-fnepjsb4-1226483691804#ixzz27ntkFqmt