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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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

Greetings on this Martin Luther King holiday in the U.S. – a day of public service. I am attending a three day meeting on global sustainability issues on Salt Spring Island, British Columbia being hosted by Canadian environmentalist, David Suzuki.

Thanks to Tod Preston of Population Action International for the attached PAI “white paper” that details the reasons why the U.S. must regain its historic leadership role on international family planning and population issues. Entitled “International Population & Family Planning Programs: An Agenda for the Obama Administration,” the white paper highlights the significant role family planning and reproductive health programs should play in the Administration’s commitment to global health and security. The white paper has been sent to key members of the Obama transition team and to key Members of Congress, accompanied by the attached transmittal letter signed by some of PAI’s Board members. These documents are also available on the Obama transition team’s website at:
http://change.gov/open_government/entry/popultion_action_international/

In addition, the documents — along with other relevant Obama transition-related material from other coalitions — are also available on PAI’s website at: http://www.populationaction.org/Issues/U.S._Policies_and_Funding/transition.shtml

Thanks to John Seager of Population Connection for the link to the just-released report, Making the Case for U.S. International Family Planning Assistance, coauthored by one of Population Connection’s board members, Dr. Duff Gillespie, along with four other former directors of the Population and Reproductive Health Program at USAID – all of whom who served in that position between 1978 and 2006.

This report will be extremely helpful in making the case to Congress and to the Obama Administration for increased funding for international family planning. See http://www.popconnect.org/media/upload/MakingtheCase.pdf?referralid=585&download=MakingtheCase.pdf

US president-elect Barack Obama will lift a freeze on funding for global family planning programs imposed by the outgoing administration, a US lawmaker said Wednesday.

“We are about to see major cultural change in Washington,” Democratic lawmaker Carolyn Maloney told reporters at the launch of the UN population agency’s (UNFPA) annual State of World Population report.

“One big change is that UNFPA will be funded,” added the congresswoman to applause.

For full article, visit:
http://afp.google.com/article

This is one in a long series of studies showing that social and cultural issues are now the major barrier to family planning use and small family norms in many countries.
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A survey released on Sunday revealed that although over 90 per cent of married men and women believe smaller families lead to a better quality of life, only some 50 per cent adhere to the practice.

Family planning experts on Sunday said social factors such as gender preferences and the belief that large families lead to long-term security are behind this discrepancy.

For full article, visit:
http://www.jordantimes.com/index.php

The United Nations commemorated World Population Day Friday in the shadow of a staggering array of grim statistics: an estimated 200 million women worldwide want to delay or avoid pregnancy but are not using safe and effective family planning.

The world’s current population of 6.4 billion people is expected to rise to over 7.0 billion by 2012 — and could reach 12 billion by 2050, if contraceptive use does not increase.

For full article, visit:
http://ipsnews.net/news.asp?idnews=43156