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Facts About The Need for Family Planning and Reproductive Health Services

For many years, the United States was a leader in supporting family planning but funding fell sharply over the past 10 years. While funding levels are increasing again, a great deal more is required to meet current needs. Our challenge is to bring our faith-informed convictions about the importance of family planning to U.S. government decision-makers. We can start by informing our own congregations and colleagues of the facts.

The Facts

Pregnancy and childbirth are a major source of ill health for women in developing countries.

Unintended pregnancy and maternal and infant death and ill health remain unacceptably high in the developing world. Family planning is a proven method of reducing maternal and infant deaths, yet an estimated 200 million women in developing countries who want to plan and space their children or do not want more children do not have access to effective contraception. Most lack information and services or the support of their husbands and communities.

Every year, more than half-a-million women die from pregnancy-related causes, 99% of them in developing countries.

Millions of women suffer serious health complications from pregnancy or childbirth.

For every woman who dies, an estimated 20–30 women suffer short- or long- term illness or disabilities, such as severe anemia, damage to the reproductive organs, severe postpartum disability (such as obstetric fistula), chronic pain or infertility.

4 million newborns die in the first month of life, 99% of them in developingcountries. Two-thirds of these newborn deaths occur in Africa, South Asia and Southeast Asia.

Only about half of the 123 million women who give birth each year in developing countries receive antenatal, delivery and newborn services. More than three in four women who needed care for obstetric complications in 2008 did not receive it.

The disparity between developed and developing countries is stark . One in 22 women in Sub-Saharan Africa dies during pregnancy or childbirth, compared with one in 110 in Asia, one in 280 in Latin America and the Caribbean, and one in 5,900 in more developed regions.

Lack of family planning contributes to the high rate of abortion. More than 50 million of the 190 million women who become pregnant each year have abortions. Many of these are clandestine and performed under unsafe conditions. Every year, an estimated 74,000 women die as the result of unsafe abortions.

The need for family planning is growing fast, and it is estimated that the “unmet need” – a term used by health experts - will grow by 40 percent in the next 15 years. But family planning has been losing ground as an international development priority. Funding is decreasing, and the gap between the need and the available resources is growing.

Moving Forward

The number of unintended pregnancies is lowest in countries with the greatest access to effective contraception and where women play a major role in family decision-making. But one evaluation found that family planning services are routinely available to women at a reasonable cost in only 14 of 88 developing countries.

We can begin to move toward the ideal of “reproductive rights” by supporting family planning services throughout the developing world. The International Conference on Population and Development (ICPD), held in Cairo in 1994, defined reproductive rights as human rights, recognized sexual health as a component of reproductive health, and called for universal access to reproductive health care by 2015. The ICPD vision includes equality between women and men in reproductive decision- making, voluntary choice in determining the number and timing of one’s children, and freedom from sexual violence, coercion and other harmful practices. A 20-year program of action, adopted by 179 countries, placed women’s empowerment and reproductive rights at the center of slowing rapid population growth and achieving sustainable development.

Fifteen years later, in 2009, the international community began assessing progress toward the goals set at ICPD. Governments are also working on the Millennium Development Goals, or MDGs, adopted by world leaders following the United Nations Millennium Summit in 2000. The eight MDGs are consistent with the ICPD’s vision. Three of them depend on the availability of reproductive health care to reduce maternal and infant deaths and combat the AIDS pandemic. In 2007, MDG 5 was expanded to include universal access to reproductive health services.

Although governments worldwide have committed to making reproductive health services available to all, resources have been insufficient to make universal access a reality. Donor assistance for family planning has decreased substantially in absolute dollar amounts in recent years, from $653 million in 1997 to $394 million in 2006.

The benefits for women and families are substantial .

• In 2008, contraceptive use prevented 188 million unintended pregnancies, 1.2 million newborn deaths, and 230,000 maternal deaths. The greatest benefits from increased availability of family planning would be in Sub-Saharan Africa and South Central Asia.
• Family planning and maternal and newborn health services improve women’s health and enhance their status and rights. They also protect the health of infants and young children and improve the well-being of families

When women can plan and space their children, they can remain in school or attend school, obtain paid employment, and improve household income. When couples have smaller families, population growth and related consumption of natural resources are lowered.