Support Real Investment in Family Planning: It's Time to Double the Money

Today, there are 200 million women who would like to limit or space pregnancies but have no access to modern methods of contraceptives. Demand for birth control is projected to increase by 40 percent in the next fifteen years. It's time for the United States to renew its commitment to make a real investment in family planning.

Protect the environment and relieve pressure on natural resources.
Continuing population growth in the developing world contributes to resource scarcity and human suffering. Population growth leads to the destruction of forests, the spread of deserts, the pollution and over-fishing of oceans and waterways, and it is a major contributor to the climate change crisis. The end results are resource depletion, environmental degradation and malnutrition.

Failure to give people the ability to make their own choices about childbearing will make solutions to all of these challenges significantly more difficult to find.

Encourage social stability and decrease conflict.
Resource scarcity and other population pressures place stress on fragile governments and other social structures. Many poor countries struggle to maintain health care, schooling and urban infrastructure in the face of rapid population growth. Countries that lack the means to provide the most basic needs of their people -- food, water, housing education, employment -- are at significant risk of instability and conflict. In countries with significant unmet need for contraceptives, high fertility rates are leading to "youth bulges" -- a high proportion of young people with little or no hope of education and employment.


As you know, the United States was once a global leader in supporting family planning, but our contributions to international family planning programs over the past decade have been inadequate. Indeed, our nation is contributing significantly less than it did fourteen years ago. When inflation is considered, we are providing 40 percent less than we did in 1995.

It's time to reverse this trend. That is why I urge you to support significant new funding and policy language to strengthen family planning programs in the FY '09 State Department, Foreign Operations Appropriations bill. Specifically, I ask that you provide a total of $1 billion for family planning in the developing world, including $63.5 million for the United Nations Population Fund (UNFPA). In addition, I urge you to include new policy language to ensure that the UNFPA funding is not withheld by the administration.

To paraphrase former Secretary of State Madeleine Albright, family planning builds stronger families, stronger communities and stronger countries. An investment of $1 billion represents the United States fair share of the total cost of meeting the existing unmet need for family planning in the developing world and it is a good investment in a healthy future for all of us.

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