More Denial on What Women Want

This entry was originally posted to the Island Press blog, Island Interactive, at www.islandpress.org/blog. Robert has posted periodic updates on population as he promotes his new book, More: Population, Nature, and What Women Want.

"Denial," Al Gore used to say, "ain't just a river in Egypt."

The word, in fact, defines an entire approach to governance that characterizes the administration of U.S. President George W. Bush: Deny that global warming justifies any significant U.S. action. Deny government scientists access to the public when their views conflict with those of the administration.

And, as illustrated on Thursday of last week, deny the United Nations Population Fund (UNFPA) any financial help to improve the health and lives of women around the world and ultimately slow population growth.

It's a toxic brew of denial that pushes people and the planet closer to catastrophe.

Each year during Bush's two presidential terms, Congress has authorized a bit less than $40 million to support UNFPA's work in some 154 developing and former Soviet bloc countries to improve basic reproductive health care and family planning for women and men who want it. The agency works to prevent violence against women and to support emergency obstetric care, a deadly threat to women in rural areas where hospitals are few and far between. And UNFPA supplies a variety of contraceptive methods appropriate to individual needs in many countries where family planning services are, to be generous, "works in progress."

One of these countries, of course, is China, which is attempting to shift the focus of its infamous one-child policy away from ham-fisted and sometimes coercive pressure on parents. What makes much more sense is simply to improve the reach of reproductive health services that women and men want, regardless of the one-child policy. UNFPA is helping the "good guys" within China's family planning bureaucracy-offering technical assistance with higher-quality condoms and other contraceptives, for example.

It's pretty hard to coerce people to use condoms. By denying funding to UNFPA, the Bush administration is simply punishing the agency in what amounts to a no-risk "photo op" to buff up its anti-abortion rights credentials.

The irony, of course, is that by taking money away from contraceptive services, the policy boosts the number of abortions all over the world. By undermining the many other reproductive health services that UNFPA helps expand, the policy pushes women further into potential harm and second-class citizenship. And the world's estimated 80 million annual unintended pregnancies continue to power population growth at a time of soaring environmental and social risk.

It's an old story, one I document in my new book More: Population, Nature, and What Women Want. Sadly, some leaders want to make sure the old story never catches up with the times in which we live.

Postscript: These blogs will become a bit less frequent over the next couple of months as I return to book writing-in this case a chapter for the upcoming Worldwatch Institute publication State of the World 2009. The theme of that book will be how the world can best cope with climate change while preventing climate catastrophe over the coming century.

Occasional future blogs may take on the population-climate connection as a result of my new research and writing. And I still owe readers a promised post on whether "Pop" Malthus's 200-year-old views on population have any wisdom to offer us today. Please stay tuned for further updates.