Family Planning

Family planning programs are a key component to comprehensive sexual and reproductive health. They provide essential and often life-saving services to women and their families. By enabling women to delay pregnancy, avoid childbearing, or space births, effective family planning programs are not only fundamental to women’s health, they also allow women and families to better manage household and natural resources, secure education for all family members, and address each family member’s healthcare needs. The best programs have also been found to increase equity between women and their partners and enhance communication and negotiation skills within couples.

Yet recent data shows that an estimated 215 million women globally have an unmet need for family planning: in other words, they do not wish to have a child at this time, yet are not using effective contraception. This lack of access to family planning methods is a major contributor to the preventable deaths of 500,000 women annually due to complications of pregnancy, childbirth, and unsafe abortion.

During the 1994 International Conference on Population and Development (ICPD), donor nations recognized the importance of family planning programs to broader development goals, and agreed to provide one-third of total funding needed in order to eliminate the unmet need for contraceptives. More than 15 years later, this commitment is still unrealized.

See CHANGE's Policy Brief International Reproductive Health and Family Planning: U.S. Funding Priorities and Funding Implications

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Ask your Representative to co-sponsor the Global Sexual and Reproductive Health Act, new legislation that promotes a truly comprehensive and integrated approach to U.S. international reproductive health programs.

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Source0 - Emergency contraception (EC) is not distributed by USAID.

Source$6.7 billion - Fulfilling the unmet need for modern family planning methods would cost, in total, $6.7 billion annually.

Source20 million - Worldwide, there are over 20 million unsafe abortions every year.

Source215 million - Worldwide, 215 million women who want to avoid a pregnancy are not using an effective method of contraception.

Source16 million - Each year there are approximately 16 million births to adolescent mothers.

Source35 - In real terms, U.S. support for family planning is at the same level now as it was 35 years ago.

Uganda: Time to Prevent Mothers From Dying Unnecessarily

According to the Uganda Demographic Health Survey Report (UDHS 2006), Ugandan women give birth to an average of seven children, which is the third highest fertility rate in the world. The children are born too early by teenage mothers. By continuing to give birth frequently, our mothers are exposed to high risk pregnancies and births.

Posted on September 5, 2010

ETHIOPIA: Tackling the perils of pregnancy

Childbirth will prove fatal for one in 27 women in Ethiopia and much of the rest of the continent, according to the UN Children’s Fund (UNICEF), versus a rate of one in 8,000 in industrialized countries

Posted on August 17, 2010

Hillary Clinton Touts Global Health Initiative as Key Foreign Policy Tool

"What exactly does maternal health or immunizations or the fight against HIV and AIDS have to do with foreign policy?" Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton queried a packed crowd of faculty and students at the Johns Hopkins School of Advance International Studies on Monday. "Well, my answer is 'everything.' "

Posted on August 17, 2010

Ethiopia: U.S. foreign policy and unsafe abortion in Africa

United States foreign policy abortion restrictions have often hampered African NGOs’ efforts to reduce deaths and disabilities associated with unsafe abortion procedures. In a positive recent development, however, the fight for African women’s access to safe abortion services took a small but important step forward.

Posted on August 5, 2010

Another Pill That Could Cause a Revolution

Could the decades-long global impasse over abortion worldwide be overcome — by little white pills costing less than $1 each?

Posted on August 3, 2010

DC pushes female condoms to fight HIV epidemic

WASHINGTON -- Charlene Cotton will talk to anyone about sex. Several days a week she stands behind a table decorated with a bowl of flavored condoms and safer sex pamphlets, calling to women passing on the street, "Come check out my table. Don't be scared." She asks: "Have you heard of the female condom?"

Posted on July 28, 2010

Maternal health includes family planning, access to abortion: Clinton

GATINEAU, Que. -- Any discussions about maternal health should address issues of family planning and abortions, U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton said Tuesday.

Posted on March 30, 2010

Trends in U.S. Support for Global Female Condom Procurement, Distribution, and Programming

Historically, the U.S. government has shown strong support for international female condom procurement and distribution. However, U.S. leadership for female condom commodities has not extended to programming. This poster was developed for the 2010 XVIII International AIDS Conference.

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File Under: Research Documents

Fact Sheet: U.S. Global HEALTH Act of 2010

The U.S. Global HEALTH Act of 2010 (H.R. 4933) establishes a strategy to coordinate health-related U.S. foreign assistance and to assist developing countries in strengthening their indigenous health workforces and improving delivery of health services.

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Fact Sheet: Global Democracy Promotion Act of 2010

The Global Democracy Promotion Act of 2010 provides that the U.S. Foreign Assistance Act cannot impose eligibility restrictions on international recipients of U.S. aid that would be illegal if imposed nationally. Would constitute a legislative repeal of the Mexico City Policy, also called the Global Gag Rule.

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Fact Sheet: Female Condoms

The basics of the female condom, the most up-to-date statistics, its level of social acceptability, and the need for increased distribution of female condoms globally.

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Country Profile: Female Condoms: Lessons from Zimbabwe

Zimbabwe is regularly cited as a female condom success story and has the highest distribution and sales of female condoms in the world.1 This success is due in large part to an array of factors including: strong civil society participation, innovative social marketing, comprehensive and robust condom distribution mechanisms, capacity building of service providers across sectors, and sustained financial and technical support from the Government of Zimbabwe and funding partners.

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Country Profile: Female Condom Programming in Malawi

With funding and support from UNFPA and USAID, the Reproductive Health Unit of the Malawi Ministry of Health has worked with both the public sector and NGOs to provide condom programming and education to women, men, and youth in conjunction with expanding access to female condoms throughout the country.

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Country Profile: Female Condoms and the Donor Landscape in Uganda

Donor support for female condoms globally has surged in the past decade. Since 2001, donors increased their support for female condoms from nearly $2 million in 2001 to almost $13 million in 2007. The bulk of donor support for female condoms has been directed at sub-Saharan Africa.

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The Case for Comprehensive: Dominican Republic

Rising HIV prevalence for young women and high rates of teen pregnancy are strong indicators of the gaps in the Dominican Republic’s sexual and reproductive health care. Moreover, despite the fact that almost all births are attended by skilled providers, maternal mortality is alarmingly high.

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