Day of Six Billion
Day of Six Billion
The worlds' population will reach six billion on October 12, a fact that has produced a furor comparable to that other millennium landmark, Y2K. The differences between the two could not be vaster.
Y2K may bring a few days of high tech slowdown and personal inconvenience. Y6B, and the day of six billion, allows the world community to consider how we can improve peoples' lives across the globe. Will the next century bring prosperity and make every child a wanted child? Or will it see ongoing generations struggling for basic survival, education, housing, employment, and health care?
When the six billionth child is born, she or he will not be greeted with a photo spread in People and a year's supply of diapers. She should receive an even better gift - the promise of sound international support and policies that could offer a life filled with possibility, not poverty. Adequate funding and support for family planning programs in the United States and around the world coupled with U.S. investment in health and education overseas - especially for women and girls - is critical to empowering individuals. Providing quality reproductive health in turn ensures a greater chance for good education, economic opportunity, and environmental health around the world.
Women and girls can tell you this themselves. When Kasina Perez of Peru gave birth at 16, her dreams of finishing school ended. "I can't study anymore and I'm going to have to leave school to sell food. It's the only way I can feed my child." Many of Peru's teens want to attend school or learn a trade so they can break the cycle of poverty. But they have little access to family planning services.
In India, V. Saraswathi complains about the lack of sex education. "Call it a prudish society, call it convention, call it orthodoxy, call it shyness. But more importantly, call it dangerous. Unless Indian parents and teachers begin making a stronger effort to educate teens about safe sexual practices, young India will enter the 21st century with a debilitating lifestyle."
Like these women, many know that family planning works. It improves overall health; helps women and girls delay the first childbirth so they can acquire better and more education, and helps them develop the skills that will help them care for their families and compete in the job market. Family planning prevents unintended pregnancies and makes for healthier mothers and healthier children.
History has shown reproductive freedom is the key to women's empowerment. This truth was acknowledged in 1994 when the nations of the world met in Cairo for the International Conference on Population and Development. There they formally recognized that reproductive rights are a basic human right, that "all couples and individuals have the right to determine freely and responsibly the number and spacing of their children and to have the information and means to do so. From birth control to abstinence!
The solution is affordable. U.S. support for international family planning assistance programs costs each of us less than three cents per week. Over one year, this amounts to less than the cost of one bag of popcorn at the movies to help tens of millions of couples in developing countries gain access to family planning.
Congress has the power to improve the lives of countless women. It should seize this opportunity by supporting international family planning programs carried out by the United Nations Population Fund (UNFPA) and the US Agency for International Development (USAID).
They may not, though. A minority in Congress wants to deny funding for UNFPA and place debilitating requirements on USAID family planning assistance overseas. These extremists think "abortion" when they hear "family planning." How wrong they are: family planning means breast and cervical cancer screening, access to contraception, yearly pelvic exams, and responsible sex education. A 1973 law prohibits US funds from being used for abortions in other countries. But while these Congressmen shadow box with the facts, nearly 600,000 women die each year due to pregnancy related causes. The vast majority of these deaths could be prevented if these women had access to family planning and reproductive health care.
This October 12, observe Y6B by writing your elected representatives in Washington. Tell them that as a citizen of the world, you consider international family planning programs to be critical to the lives of millions of women around the world. Tell them people should be the focus of all efforts to promote development, social justice, eradicate poverty, and create sustainable living conditions throughout the world. Tell them without family planning, there will be even more unplanned pregnancies, more deaths, and more people struggling to survive. Let them know if they ignore the wishes of the American people, they will hear from you again.
