The international development community is celebrating a major achievement that will have a concrete impact on humanity. On 11 July the UK Government and Bill and Melinda Gates, with the support of the United Nations Population Fund and world governments made history at the London Family Planning Summit. The agreement they reached exceeded all expectations for the funds that would be generated to fund family planning in the developing world, allowing 120 more million women their right to decide on the number, timing and spacing of their children by 2020. This is a remarkable gesture in times of global austerity, and will fulfil the unmet need of over half the women in the world who currently lack access to family planning. Few political commitments can ever have stood to alleviate such a large proportion of a single global challenge.
But in marvelling at how impressive this gesture is in overall terms, we also risk failing to notice one of the equally momentous consequences it will have: helping to avoid 50 million abortions between now and 2020. 50 million difficult, sad and often tragic circumstances; 50 million moral dilemmas; 50 million costly and testing medical interventions for women that will not need to take place. In light of this, it would be logical to expect that anyone wanting to reduce abortion levels should be celebrating. But why is this not the case?
The opposition to abortion has always been voluble, and it is a cause that manages to attract (undue) populist support - usually with a mixture of emotional blackmail, pseudo-scientific findings and inherent religious indoctrination. It preys on people who are vulnerable to all of the above and have not fully considered or felt what the reality of pregnancy entails for a women. And whilst this is a stance that disrespects women's autonomy and their right to decide on their own bodies, it is a stance that pretends to be founded upon an understandable - albeit falsified - moral principle: the desire to prevent suffering and protect human dignity and the overly simplistic concept of 'life.'
In the aftermath of the summit we are baffled to see that the people who object to abortion seem also to be those who object to the London Summit and the greatest single gesture in recent history to reduce abortion. Despite wanting to prevent suffering and protect human dignity, a vocal minority with a seeming laudable principle view it as wrong to enable women in the developing world to prevent themselves from becoming pregnant, whether this be by using condoms, pills or any other means of modern family planning. Methods that we have long taken for granted in Europe, but which they believe now should not be available in developing countries.
The forces against modern family planning are not as humane and rights-based as they pretend to be. Under the guise of respecting tradition and the overly simplistic concept of 'life' their thinking seems to stem from misogynistic, patriarchal and archaic norms that have been seeking to subjugate women since before concepts such as gender equality and family planning existed. Structures that see women's reproduction as a reason for them to be enslaved, and which actively discriminate against anyone who chooses not to live their life in a (heterosexual) 'traditional' marriage.
In reality no-one is "pro-abortion," but rather we, along with the mainstream populace of the vast majority of the developing world, are "pro the right to abortion." Each woman should be allowed and empowered to make her own decision as to whether she continues her pregnancy - according to her health, her morals, her religion, her resources and all the other circumstances she finds herself in. And at the moment when she makes this decision the only thing anyone else can do should be to offer her unbiased support in whatever decision she takes.
London marks a milestone for the development community and family planning, but the real battle to tackle the entrenched political animosity towards women enjoying their reproductive health and rights in the developing world is only just beginning. Family planning is not the panacea for all the challenges facing the development community, but it is an indispensable ingredient in allowing all countries the opportunity to enjoy the development that we have had.
And once we have made family planning accessible and acceptable we can use this momentum to remove the other barriers to development that remain. Barriers that continue to hamper millions of women and their societies' development, like child marriage, unsafe abortion and female genital mutilation. Once the Olympics have come and gone, we hope that this will be the truly ground-breaking legacy associated with London in 2012.
This article was co-authored by Neil Datta, Secretary of the European Parliamentary Forum on Population and Development.
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The real way to prevent abortions is better contraception, better support for pregnancies, financial empowerment of pregnant women and single mothers, and the elimination of the unwed mother stigma.
The previous commenter only stated that every pregnancy being planned would be the ideal. And I can't see any reason why they are wrong. This would pretty much guarantee all children were wanted.
Abortion is not contraception. It is a reactive decision to a situation. Contraception is proactive.
Problem is if you don't know about or have access to the proactive solution and you get pregnant then you only have two options left. Go trough without or make use of the reactive solution. I refuse to believe any well adjusted women take the decision lightly.
In some human renditions of reality, the objective is to populate the planet until it goes pop. Obviously it won’t go pop, because an unseen hand will intervene in some unexplained manner to prevent this. Unfortunately, a practical demonstration of this process is currently unavailable. Thus its all on trust.
“what the reality of pregnancy entails for a women.”
And what the reality of existence on this world entails for all of us. Subject to production of convincing evidence to the contrary, of course.
“the desire to prevent suffering”
surely relates to the entire seven stages. Not just those selected.
“The forces against modern family planning are not as humane and rights-based as they pretend to be.”
If they are, let them first eliminate famine from the face of the Earth. Then by all means proselytize.
“Family planning is not the panacea for all the challenges facing the development community”
Although debating the differences between fact and fiction may well be.
I wonder, who of the so called pro-choice brigade have ever condered what the reality of an abortion is to live with?
To have an abortion under any circumstances is a traumatic thing and something the woman concerned has to live with. As is carrying a child that is a product of abuse or that may put the woman's health in danger.
I think that this is the reason that so many pro-lifers will not join the band waggon to bring family planning to many in the developing world. Although I agree this can only be a good thing.
Pro-choice ought to be just that and women who choose to keep thier babies under difficult circumstances should be afforded the same respect as those women who choose not to.
I can see the objections to abortion, even if on balance I'm pro choice, but I can't see why any reasonable person would object to contraception
This is before we touch on the developing world aspect, where most children die before the age of 5 and the fact that prevention is better than cure. The world's population is increasing too fast as it is, giving more women the opportunity to choose whether to have a child or not is the more responsible course, for the women, for the children (who avoid being born into a time and place where they were unwanted) and for the planet, fewer mouths to feed at this stage has to be a good thing. Many studies have shown that when women have access to family-planning the quality of life improves for all because the limited resources available don't have to stretch as far.
And on a not-unrelated note, I still find it strange that so many pro-lifers are anti gun-control, it's OK to kill people with guns but not prevent them being born into grinding poverty in the first place?
China doesn't have a limit, the baby is not considered a person until it has taken it's first breath if the mother has carried to term but decides while in labour to have an abortion, she can.
From what little I know of the issue in the USA, your biggest problem seems to be inconsistency across States, with some allowing late-term, some not, others requiring two physicians, I seem to remember something about one state where the woman is required to sit through a presentation, undergo counselling and have two doctors present, although I'm not sure which one.
I would think this issue would be a matter for the federal government to decide as one policy should be followed evenly across the country, but perhaps the Government prefers to leave it to the individual states so as to pass the buck.
Personally I still find it strange that most of the rabidly pro-lifers are also anti-gun control, that seems contradictory to me....
Another interesting point I've never heard put to the "pro-lifers" is that if they believe the foetus is going to heaven straight away, then where is the problem? Surely they are blessed with not having to suffer on Earth first!
I think the religious are going to have to work on their arguments a bit better if they want to win over the more reasonable of us.....
All Jenny Tonge is trying to do here is to expose the fundamental hypocrisy of the pro-lifers - to show that their agenda is far more sinister than they would have us believe. To that end, this is a powerful article that should have that entire movement on the defensive, from the slightly bonkers types waving their angry, mis-spelt placards outside clinics all the way up to the truly insane right-wing billionaires who keep on politicising the entire issue and expose their arcane and dangerous motives in the process. Keep it up Ms Tonge...
but I think that being an unwanted child must be awful and if people don't want to create a life then abortion is the least worst option.
How do you feel about that?
This is probably one of the most accurate statements about abortion that I've ever read online. I talk to a lot of women who are considering or planning to have abortions. What almost 100% of them agree on is that their strong preference would be not to be in the situation they are in. And when you are facing an unplanned or otherwise problematic pregnancy, ALL the options kind of suck. But abortion is often the best of a bunch of suck-y choices.
So that we could jail half of the world's population every week for genocide by masturbation.
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Your rational, moral Modern analysis misses the point. Modernity and Premodernity are in a state of fatal collision and have been for several centuries. is it not time to put our Modern cards on the table and tell these Premodern traditionalists where to get off?
On the same subject another blogger talked of ''empowering women'' with contraception etc. But she did not talk about disempowering men! I asked her. No reply.
Now you want to play some kind of global sleight of hand by saying ''Oh look, 50 million fewer abortions for you Premodern nutters, if you allow contraception.''
You really think this is going to work?
This is an interesting comment. Are you asserting that men's *power* lies in forcing pregnancies on unwilling women? Why would any decent person, male or female, support the idea that the only men can *win* is by using children as a way to cripple women and prevent them from achieving? Most of us would agree men can succeed on a level playing field.
I hope you do no have any difficulty telling the difference between what I describe and what I believe.
I think these traditionalist men are 100% wrong. But they do not! And they have custom, tradition, religion and their own desires to back them up.
So it will probably not work with them but where would we, rational people, be if we stopped trying to think and reason?