The London Family Planning Summit expects governments to provide permanent funding for contraception programs. Where will the money come from?
– Developed countries will likely siphon scarce funding from other programs to comply.- Current family planning funding in the developing world is $4 billion (1)
– The Gates Foundation is a large stakeholder in population control programs. In 2009, it spent $437.2 million on population funding, including family planning and contraceptives (2)
– USAID is budgeted to cut maternal and child health funding by $28 million from 2012 to 2013, including reductions to nutrition pro- grams while budget requests for family planning have increased (3)
The London Family Planning Summit creates preferential treatment for contraception groups, above programs providing basic health care, education, infrastructure, economic programs – measures that lift women and communities out of poverty. In fact, this is already a problem:
– The U.S. spent $72.2 million inter- nationally on contraceptive and condom supplies in 2010. By contrast, USAID spent $75 million on its entire global nutrition budget during the same time period (4)
– The U.S. government shipped abroad 744,366,780 total contraceptives in 2010 (5)
– The USAID Family Planning & Re- productive Services 2012 budget is set at $524 million. This is more than the budgets for tuberculosis, public health threats, pandemic influenza, vulnerable children, and nutrition combined (6)
Family planning is the wrong way to address maternal health concerns. The London Family Planning Summit assumes that pregnancy is the problem to be eliminated rather than addressing medical care for pregnant mothers. Setting timetables and goals to bolster contraception usage in the name of maternal health only leads to coercive family planning programs. For instance:
– WHO reports that 89% of partnered women between ages 15 and 49 al- ready have access to and are using an “effective method” of contraception (7)
– UNFPA supports population control through vasectomies and tubal liga- tions to reduce maternal mortality by 75%, inspiring forced sterilization campaigns in Uzbekistan and China (8)
– U.K. Department for International Development gave $268 million in 2005 to Reproductive and Child Health Phase II program in India. That program is accused of forced sterilization campaigns against the poor and lower castes (9)
– Pregnant women in developing countries need basic medical care. Contraception programs do not provide any support for pregnant mothers or newborns.
Monitoring of these contraception programs will be assigned to groups like the Summit’s partners, with a history of population control, promoting abortion and abuses. For example, Planned Parenthood faces charges of fraud, sex–selection abortions, assisting suspected child sex traffickers, and violating statutory rape laws.
This was put together by the Catholic Family and Human Rights Institute (C-FAM) in preparation for the London Family Planning Summit to be held on the 11th of July. The Summit is sponsored by the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation, the UNFPA, and UKaid.
[1] https://www.intrahealth.org/page/family-planning-it-takes-a-health-workerand-saves-money-and-lives
[2] https://resourceflows.org/index.php/articles/c87/
[3] https://foreignassistance.gov/Initiative_GH_2012.aspx?FY=2012#ObjAnchor
[4] https://deliver.jsi.com; https://foreignassistance.gov/Initiative_GH_2012.aspx?FY=2012#ObjAnchor
[6] https://foreignassistance.gov/Initiative_GH_2012.aspx?FY=2012#ObjAnchor
[7] https://www.who.int/gho/maternal_health/en/index.html
[8] https://www.unfpa.org/emergencies/manual/6.htm; https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/magazine-17612550; https://www.nationalreview.com/corner/303173/chinas-forced-abortions-statistics-and-tragedies-ari-n-schulman
[9] https://www.ncregister.com/daily-news/u.s.-u.k.-foreign-aid-tied-to-indias-forced-sterilization-campaign/; https://www.hrln.org/hrln/reproductive-rights/pils-a-cases/884-supreme-court-issues-notices-in-public-interest-litigation-regarding-unsafe-and-unethical-sterilizations.html; https://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052702304050304577377811263434578.html
LifeNews Note: Timothy Herrmann writes for the Catholic Family and Human Rights Institute. This article originally appeared in the pro-life group’s Turtle Bay and Beyond blog and is reprinted with permission.
