This page features other countries and what has happened in the way of population growth in them. Some stories are heartening, others less so.
General
The charity Population Matters has recently issued a paper titled ‘Gilead Watch: Protect Women’s rights from pronatal politicians’ This refers to a report ‘Welcome to Gilead’ issued in 2021, exposing how politicians across the world are justifying the restriction of women’s reproductive rights because of fear of population decline.. This report is here
Items below have been updated, or added anew, using information from this report.
Afghanistan
Since coming back in power in 2021, the Taliban has been removing women’s rights. From February 2023, they have completely banned the sale of contraception in parts of Afghanistan
Africa
Not a country, of course, but particularly pressing. This article article in the Rwandan paper ‘New Times’ by Donah Mbabazi, and headed ‘Family planning myths hurting service delivery’, discusses the efforts to counter misinformation, much of it deliberately spread.
Individual countries in Africa are amongst those listed below.
Link:- tinyurl.com/hkr8j4s
Bangladesh. ‘The benefits of family planning can be seen clearly in controlled and “natural” experiments. One of the most compelling controlled experiments demonstrating the benefits of family planning is the landmark project undertaken by the International Centre for Diarrhoeal Disease Research, Bangladesh (icddr,b) in the Matlab district of Bangladesh. This is described in an article from the Population Council, by Dr. Ubaidur Rob, and is on https://tinyurl.com/5k5chxye
The Matlab population of 173,000 people was divided into two areas: an experimental area, where access to high-quality family planning services was greatly expanded to include home visits, a wide array of contraceptive choices, and follow-up care; and a control area, which received the standard set of less-intensive services that were available country-wide. Population Council research showed that the impact in the experimental area was large and immediate: contraceptive use increased markedly, fertility declined rapidly, and women’s health, household earnings, and use of preventive health care improved. Children living in households that received family planning outreach were more likely to survive to the age of five and to attend school than were children from households that did not participate’ (part of an article ‘Family Planning- a Key to Prosperity’)
Link:https://tinyurl.com/2uyb5nm9
Botswana. GABORONE, May 5, 2017—The World Bank’s ‘Forever Young’ report highlights the fact that the fertility decline experienced by Botswana since the 1980s has put the country at the edge of a window of demographic opportunity, decades before the rest of Sub-Saharan Africa. In 1980 the total fertility rate (TFR) was 6.2 children per woman and in 2015 it was 2.7 children per woman, the greatest fertility decline in Africa in the last three decades. As a consequence, the proportion of child dependents is declining rapidly, while the working-age population will increase by 29 percent between now and 2050.
While change in Botswana is inevitable, a positive dividend from it is not. Botswana will have to act now and implement key policy reforms to allow current and future generations to harness it.
Links
Brazil. Brazil is another success story. Fertility has fallen from six children to 1.9 since the 1960s. Eighty per cent of women of reproductive age use some form of contraception. This is associated with high levels of literacy, and the influence of novellas on television (probably from Population Media Center, which is active in Brazil).
Links: http://tinyurl.com/zlrap6a
China. China’s population policy is possibly the World’s most extreme example of population planning. It was introduced in 1979: however it was modified in the 1980s to allow exceptions in certain circumstances, and was eventually eliminated in 2015.
The name ‘one child policy’ is thus a misnomer, since over the period about 50% of parents were allowed a second child. The imposition of the policy was rigorous, however, and provincial governments required the use of contraception, sterilization and abortion, imposing enormous fines for non-compliance.
According to the government, 400 million births were prevented in the period from 1970: this has been disputed, but subsequent independent research suggests more than 500 million births between 1970 and 2015 were prevented. By 2011, fertility dropped to to 1.4 children per woman.
A subsequent relaxation of the policy to three children per couple has not resulted in a substantial increase in births. A Canadian Broadcasting Corporation analysis indicated “Repealing the one-child policy may not spur a huge baby boom, however, in part because fertility rates are believed to be declining even without the policy’s enforcement. Previous easing of the one-child policy have spurred fewer births than expected, and many people among china’s younger generations see smaller family sizes as ideal…Couples naturally decide to have fewer children as they move from fields to the cities, become more educated, and when women establish careers outside the home”.
In 2021 and 2022, the government has declared there is ‘no excuse’ for not getting married and having two or more children. Availability of vasectomies and of abortion has been reduced. The Communist Party. requires officials to oppose ‘radical feminism’
More recently, it is reported that the number of people marrying is declining. This article in The Guardian is headed ‘Marriages in China drop to record low despite government push’: https://tinyurl.com/4fmx5r2j
Links:-
Egypt Aya Salah, Tuesday 14 Mar 2023
The Egyptian government will provide an annual incentive of EGP 1,000 to married women with no more than two children as part of its efforts to address the issue of overpopulation. Please click this link for full article.
El Salvador. El Salvador has the most severe law on abortion in the world. Any woman who has the misfortune to have a miscarriage is likely to be charged with abortion, and may serve a sentence of many years. According to this article in The Guardian, the Church is complicit in this. Doctors who attend a miscarriage are liable to similar punishment if they fail to report it.
Links http://tinyurl.com/nke22jl
Europe. Most of Europe has a fertility close to replacement. This has resulted in an increase of the median age, which is an inevitable consequence of reduction of fertility, especially when accompanied by an increase in life expectancy. As may be expected, this has resulted in some anxieties about the support of the elderly and the cost of pensions, reduction of the workforce etc. Consequently it is difficult to find articles that don’t bewail the drop of fertility.
This Wikipedia article, ‘Ageing of Europe’, concentrates on the consequences of Europe’s increased life expectancy and diminishing fertility. The article typically sees the decline of fertility as something that needs to be reversed It deals with several countries separately, from Germany’s very low fertility of 1.42 to France’s fertility of 2.03. However, the point is made in the discussion of Belgium’s position, ‘The decline in the workforce will partly compensate by lowering unemployment which will in turn lower the cost of childcare’.
This Wikipedia article, ‘List of European countries by population growth rate’, is useful, and shows that the overall growth of population in Europe is 0.25%, and has a useful map showing population change in European countries. UK’s growth is higher than that, at 0.25% pa.
This article from The Guardian is a case in point: ‘Europe needs many more babies to avert a population disaster’. It makes points about support of the elderly strongly, but does not, in my view, tell the whole story. It very much takes the economists’ line, that growth is an end in itself. I include it, though, partly because it is informative about the situation in parts of Europe, and partly because it makes the kind of points that we have to counter. Many of the readers’ comments disagree with it: typically one says, it is ‘yet another article attempting to induce panic about so-called “low birth rates” that doesn’t mention climate change or resource depletion.’
The issue is complicated by migration, of course, but although migration may alter the numbers and rate of growth in the countries immediately affected, it does not affect world totals.
Links: Ageing of Europe, http://tinyurl.com/z5chw3w
List of countries by population growth rate, http://tinyurl.com/zvra6wr
Guardian: ‘Europe needs more babies’, http://tinyurl.com/gu9bd2q
Hungary
In 2022, Prime Minister Viktor Orban endorses the ‘Great Replacement’ theory that Europe is commiting suicide by allowing immigration. Banning abortion is proposed as a solution. Later in the year a study concludes that having too many educated women is a threat to the birth rate, as they are less likely to marry and have children. The report also expresses concern that ‘feminine traits’ may be encouraged by a university education, hence ‘weakening sexual equality’
Orban has exceeded himself. He now proposes that women who have four or more children should not have to pay income tax for the rest of their lives, and should receive grants to buy cars big enough to accommodate them. He accompanies this with right wing rhetoric about immigrants. tinyurl.com/39s7uwfc
India. India has had rather mixed success with family planning. In the 1970s, Indira Ghandi implemented a forced sterilisation programme, the reaction to which created aversion to family planning. This has hampered Government programmes for decades.
Fertility has nevertheless declined slowly, from 5.7 in 1966 it has dropped to 2.7 in 2009. Fertility levels vary widely across the country, as shown by this map, some states having less than replacement fertility
Links: tinyurl.com/mtn4r5cn See also this encouraging article, on http://tinyurl.com/jko4oh9
Iran. Iran was one of the first countries to establish a family planning programme. The Imperial Govt launched its family planning programme in 1967: it acknowledged family planning as a human right. By the mid 1970s, 37% of married women were practising family planning (24% with modern methods), but fertility remained at more than 6 births per woman.
This programme was dismantled after the 1979 Islamic Revolution, partly because it was seen as a Western innovation. .However, some health professionals were able to negotiate exceptions to this ban. Population expanded during the war with Iraq, and was growing at about 3% a year at the end of it, one of the highest in the world.
After the war, the Government saw the rate of increase as a threat to social development, and reinstated a family planning programme. This programme was now supported by extensive education, efforts to reduce child mortality and extension of retirement benefits, amongst other measures.
The speed of fertility decline was beyond expectation. Whereas the target was to reduce fertility to 4.0 births to women by 2011, they achieved a rate of 2.0 by 2000. The success was attributed to the Government’s information and education programme and to an extensive health care delivery service able to meet all needs. Family planning was one of the services that was offered free. This decline is evidence of the effectiveness of non-coercive policies properly applied by a Government
However, this policy was reversed by Amajinedad in 2012, making vasectomes and tubectomes criminal offences.
Another important article has emerged since writing the above. It is particularly interesting in that it shows the readiness of people to reduce family sizes, given the means and the information: conversely it shows the difficulty when governments change their minds and try to increase fertility. This is where coercion really occurs in population issues, and people are denied the means of making their own decisions.
Currently, Ayatollah Khamenei is seeking to double Iran’s population by 2050
Links: tinyurl.com/hh7f634
https://tinyurl.com/yckskbh8 The article referred to in the last paragraph above.
Ireland, Northern.
The big issue with Northern Ireland as far as reproductive rights go is abortion. Until recently, NI had amongst the most restrictive laws on abortion in Europe: It was the only part of the United Kingdom with a complete ban on abortion except where the woman’s life was at risk or there was a threat to her mental or physical health. About three women a day were coming to the UK to receive abortions, a process that depended on being able to afford the cost.
Movement on the situation was bogged down in the political situation, with a devolved government not functioning and the UK government under Theresa May and Boris Johnson depending on the support of 10 DUP MPs, who strongly opposed the move to reform the law. Eventually, after a June 2018 ruling from the Supreme Court that the situation was in breach of human rights, and a law in June 2019 stating that the Northern Ireland Abortion law would be lifted by 22nd October if the devolved government had not reformed by that date, abortion was de-criminalized.
Links: Huffington Post: https://tinyurl.com/yb4zw2a6
Guardian article ‘Now give us the right to abortion’: https://tinyurl.com/ya8nn5sz
Belfast Telegraph, http://tinyurl.com/jpez56o
Ireland, Republic of. The Republic was from the beginning heavily under the influence of the Catholic Church, and followed the Church’s teaching on matters concerning reproduction and families. Contraception was therefore illegal until 1980, when it was legalised with strong restrictions. Subsequent legislation has made contraception more available, formerly only by prescription by a doctor, but now contraception is readily available, including ‘morning after’ medication.
The death of Savita Halappanavar in 2012, who had been deprived of an abortion while suffering a septic miscarriage because it was contrary to the law at that time, impelled a change in the law on abortions These were declared legal in 2019
The change of attitude in Ireland is undoubtedly linked to the weakening of the authority of the Church resulting from sexual abuse scandals and the cruelties of the Magdalene Laundries.
Links:
Abortion referendum: https://tinyurl.com/ydgzxhjw
Contraception in the Republic of Ireland https://tinyurl.com/y7nsy9ey
Current availability of contraceptives https://tinyurl.com/y8yxjd9y
Italy
In 2022 the Brothers of Italy party wins power (in coalition). They have appointed anti-abortion politician Eugenia Roccella as Minister for Family, Natality and Equal Opportunities
Malawi. The first article reports a visit to a maternity wing in Mzimba, north Malawi, and reveals rampant overcrowding. The writer reports the district commissioner lamenting that local population growth is becoming ‘terrifyingly perturbing’. Fertility remains elevated at about 4,9: annual population growth is over 500,000 and the growth rate is 3% With this in mind, we can commend Chief Inkosi ya Makosi M’belwa of Mzimba, who in late December 2015( http://tinyurl.com/zwj4ahh ) urged his subjects “to slow down on child bearing”. The chief also noted at that time, “We’re bearing too many children. We’re growing at an alarming rate, and yet the size of our land is the same.” The youthful traditional leader encouraged those planning to marry to have “a maximum of two children.” http://tinyurl.com/zl57ovb
The second article deals with the crisis of forest destruction for charcoal, and the resulting failure of water supply to the capital, Lilongwe.
Links: Chief Inkosi http://tinyurl.com/zl57ovb , Forest destruction, tinyurl.com/m8vezb7c
Niger ‘Niger is, by the reckoning of the UN’s Human Development Index, the poorest place on earth. Most of its inhabitants eke out a living growing subsistence crops on small plots of dusty, infertile land. Despite this agricultural bias, the drought-stricken country cannot feed itself, even in good years. An estimated 2.5m people out of a total of 17m have no secure source of food. When harvests fail, which they do almost annually, that number shoots up. In 2012, when the worst of the recent food crises ravaged the Sahel region, almost a quarter of Niger’s population was said to be going hungry, prompting desperate relief campaigns by international donors. This perpetual food crisis is compounded by doggedly high fertility rates. With an average of 7.6 children per woman, Niger has the world’s highest rates.’ from an article in ‘The Economist’, Aug 16, 2014
Links: , Economist article, http://tinyurl.com/jbpezy5
New York Times article, http://tinyurl.com/jx22tzn
Interview with Chidera Benoit, tinyurl.com/225v6ryf
Nigeria. According to the United Nations, Nigeria has been undergoing explosive population growth and has one of the highest growth and fertility rates in the world. By their projections, Nigeria is one of eight countries expected to account collectively for half of the world’s total population increase from 2005–2050. By 2100 the UN estimates that the Nigerian population will be between 505 million and 1.03 billion people (middle estimate: 730 million). In 1950, Nigeria had only 33 million people.
“By 2050,our population is expected to double and by 2100, Nigeria’s population will jump to 791 million, overtaking China to become the second-most populous country in the world after only India. This is something that can’t be neglectedas more than 80 million Nigerians already live below the poverty line and could have a better life by choosing a small family”. Quote from Population Matters article, Tackling population growth in Nigera: interview with Childera Beniot’ tinyurl.com/57fea7vu
Nigeria’s largest city is Lagos. Lagos has grown from about 300,000 in 1950[144] to an estimated 15 million today.
This article, headed ‘Basic Infrastructures can no longer support Nigeria’s population’, is from the Nigerian ‘Daily Post’, and is by Ikenna Asomba.
This article, by Akin Mabogunje, a Nigerian geographer, is entitled ‘Nigeria must take Family Planning Serious’ (sic). It appeared in ‘AllAfrica’.
Another article, originally from the Nigerian national newspaper ‘This Day’, discusses uncontrolled population growth: this is an extract. ‘If the recently released world population figures are anything to go by, Nigeria has a lot to worry about. By all projections, the population of our country is estimated to hit 200 million in the next three years, from an estimated 178.5 million as at July last year. Currently, Nigeria ranks 7th in the list of countries by population with a density of 193 persons per kilometre while 51 per cent of that population is urban and the median age is 17.8 years. According to the United Nations in its new population prediction, by the year 2050, three of the 10 most populous countries in the world will be in Africa.’
On the other hand, this article from Population Media Center, headed ‘Mother with a Big Heart: Newest Nigerian Chief works for empowerment in villages’ is heartening
Links: http://tinyurl.com/j2cowpb on ‘Basic Infrastructure’,
http://tinyurl.com/zmjcom6 on ‘Why Nigeria must take Family Planning Serious’, and
http://tinyurl.com/htb5rdn on ‘uncontrolled population growth’
http://tinyurl.com/zuj57mz on Mother with a big heart
Northern Ireland. See Ireland, Northern
Philippines The Philippines have long suffered from determined resistance of the Church to family planning. Pope Francis’ recent remark to the effect that ‘people should practice responsible parenthood, rather than breeding like rabbits’, was followed by the less reported observation that no outside institution should impose it views about regulating family size on the developing world. “Every people” he insisted, should be able to maintain its identity without being “ideologically colonised”. The irony of this is that in the Philippines it is precisely the Church that has been the ideological coloniser. It is the Church, after all, that has vigorously sought to impose its opposition to contraception on the population.
Meanwhile, surveys show that most Filipinos favour making contraception available: not surprising, considering the unreliability of the church-approved methods of birth control.
In spite of the passing of a Reproductive Health law in 2012, the Supreme Court is still obstructing the use and distribution of contraceptives. The population of these overcrowded islands are still increasing at over 1.8 million annually. This is “a major stumbling block for the government to reduce maternal and newborn deaths in the country, decrease poverty, and uplift the lives of Filipinos by providing information and access on the full range of modern family planning methods.”
Links: tinyurl.com/225v6ryf Article on influence of the church.
Poland
In 2022, Poland ranked worst country in Europe for contraception access. One in five young people do not want children, according to a poll in that year. The chairman of the Law and Justice Party attributes low birthrate to ‘cultural resistance’, and to young women drinking too much alcohol
Republic of Ireland. See Ireland, Republic of
Russia
In 2022, Russia revives the Mother Heroine award, originally a Soviet idea, rewarding women who have more than ten children.
Parliamentarians propose a ban on ‘gay propaganda’ as a threat to family values, and in 2022 the Government produced a TV ad attacking Western values such as gays, vegetarians, antiracism and the childfree
The Sahel. This is a region rather than a country. It is the zone of transition between the Sahara to the north and the Sudanian Savannah to the south, incorporating parts of several countries from Senegal in the west and Ethiopia in the East. The country is semi arid, and has been subject to extreme droughts
UN demographers predict that by 2100 the Sahel’s population will grow from 125 million to 650 million, this increase being 25% greater than the current population of the EU, whereas the IPCC project that the region’s temperature will rise between 4.5 and 6.5 degrees, making it virtually uninhabitable.
A recent article marks the awareness of the governments of the Sahel of the dangers of population growth. An article in the Bangladesh News reveals how Bangladesh, with its successful population policies, has hosted a week-long international conference titled ‘Sahel-Bangladesh Knowledge Exchange on Population Policy and Reproductive Health’: participants include several Sahel countries (Mali, Niger, Mauritania, Cote d’Ivore and Chad). The objective is to learn about Bangladesh population and reproductive health policies. In his opening remarks, Qimio Fan, World Bank Country Director for Bangladesh said that Bangladesh is successful because they put women at the centre of the agenda for development, including addressing family planning and population challenges.
This article on tinyurl.com/3tmbaf4h is about ‘What five Sahel countries learned from Bangladesh about strengthening population policies’. Ignore the first paragraph, which seems counterintuitive: the rest of the article is very informative.
The following is from another article, ‘Climate change: Time to think “Family Planning”
“The Sahel is that part of North Africa including parts of Chad, Burkina Faso, Eritrea, the Gambia, Guinea-Bissau, Mali, Mauritania, Niger, Senegal and Sudan and it is “among the most chronically vulnerable regions in the world due to many factors, including poverty, population growth, and the variable climate.” It is a region where all the issues in this paper come together to cause a perfect storm. This arid region is particularly vulnerable to climate change, having suffered numerous severe droughts and low rainfall over recent years. These impacts have in turn led to declining agricultural production, and related knock-on effects on food security. As populations grow, due in part to a lack of access to family planning, environmental pressures increase and so does the need to migrate to safety. Government instability in Sahel countries hampers responding to all of these interrelated challenges. The fertility rate in the Sahel is around 5. Few parts of the world are in greater need of the demographic dividend, many countries suffer from extreme levels of human rights abuse and much of the Sahel suffers from weak health infrastructure. These issues are summarised in a recent publication stating, “Four of the 10 countries with the highest total fertility rates in the world are in the [Sahel]. Contraceptive use by married women is extremely low—for example, less than 2% of married women in Chad use contraception. Continuing this trajectory of high fertility and low contraceptive use will severely undermine these countries’ abilities to respond to social sector needs. […] In Niger, population growth is 4% annually and will double in just 20 years. ‘‘This growth will require a massive investment in schools, health clinics, and job creation for youth,’’ with additional investment also needed in agriculture and livestock systems to ensure food security.” This combination of climate change, unmet family planning need, population growth, political instability and food insecurity has the potential to manifest in a catastrophic humanitarian disaster. Investing in family planning must be one of the elements of a package of actions to enhance resilience in the region.”
This report , ‘Crisis in the Sahel’, is longer than you would probably wish to read, but there is a good executive summary at the beginning
Links; tinyurl.com/z8fpq9u
Thailand. This is a success story. Due to a comparatively relaxed attitude of Thais, and the fact of greater equality between the sexes than in most developing countries, and to the efforts of one man, Mechai Viravaidya, the average number of children in Thai families has fallen from 7 to 1.5. Co-operative partnerships, innovative marketing, and a sense of fun have helped Thailand defuse the population bomb.
Uganda.
In spite of a population policy, lack of funding is crippling family planning in Uganda. An article in the journal AllAfrica, by Eric Wakabi, paints a picture of contraceptive availability in Uganda which can only be described as atrocious. The article is titled ‘Uganda: Rampant Contraceptive Stock-Outs Frustrate Family Planning’, and reveals that at some health facilities have been out of pills for over a year. It was originally published in the Ugandan paper ‘The Observer’.
An article in the Ugandan paper, Daily Monitor, confirms the difficulties of carrying out a population policy in an impoverished state.
Uganda’s current fertility is 5.9, and with the paucity of domestic funding for family planning information and services, it is little wonder that Uganda will be 10th largest contributor to population growth by 2050, adding 62 million to its current 40 million.
Eric Wakabi is a health activist and communications officer with HEPS-Uganda (Coalition for Health Promotion and Social Development)
Links:- http://tinyurl.com/gu9m5mb (requires subscription)
United Kingdom. The situation in the UK is complicated in that the UK comprises four countries. Policies in England, Wales and Scotland are broadly similar, but those of Northern Ireland are very different, particularly in respect of abortion. Northern Ireland is treated in this article as a separate nation (see Ireland, Northern above)
UK’s current total fertility rate (TFR) is 1.8, below the replacement rate of 2.1. It has not been above 2.1 since 1972 but ‘population momentum’, (caused by numbers of births when babies born at the peak of population growth reach reproductive age) and net immigration have led to a population rise of nearly 10 million people since then.
A radical overhaul of sex and relationship education has been widely welcomed, (March 2017), although some campaigners express concern that the opt-outs for faith schools might leave some young people vulnerable. MPs across all parties had called for the change, calling the previous guidance published in 2000 hopelessly inadequate for a modern world where children can be exposed to pornography, online grooming and abuse at the touch of a button, and at an increasingly young age. This Guardian article is relevant.
Links: Guardian, http://tinyurl.com/zxnzmas
Belfast Telegraph, http://tinyurl.com/jpez56o
Added February 2024:
Why it’s time to reform UK abortion law
In the UK, one in three women will have an abortion by the age of 45 and 90% of the population is pro-choice. Abortion is recognised as a safe and common form of healthcare, and a human right.
However, abortion access in England and Wales is still defined by a law passed in 1861 – meaning it’s one of the few forms of healthcare still written into criminal law.
While abortion has been decriminalised in Northern Ireland, in Great Britain, abortion is only legal if it meets the criteria set out in the 1967 Abortion Act. If someone accesses an abortion outside of these parameters, they could face a police investigation or even jail time.
While the vast majority of people who want an abortion can still access one, the law can add to stigma and it creates unnecessary barriers, for example, by requiring the approval of two doctors.
Decriminalisation does not mean deregulation. Abortion care would and should be regulated in the same way that other healthcare services are. Decriminalisation means recognising that it is not in the public interest to prosecute people for ending their own pregnancies.
Abortion should be treated as healthcare, not a crime. It’s time to decriminalise abortion across the UK.
United States of America
I had considered rewriting the whole of this item: but since a lot of effort went into writing of it, and since the latest news confirms the worst fears expressed in it, I have decided to let it stand. The Supreme Court of the United States has ruled that Roe v Wade, the law which established the right to abortion, should be struck down. Several states have action prepared to go into effect immediately in consequence of this legislation. This is a consequence of the majority of judges in the Supreme Court being Trump appointments. These are life appointments. At least one of these judges advocates making contraception illegal, and criminalising same sex marriages and inter racial marriages. The judges have also distinguished themselves by gutting the Environmental Protection Agency
The original article
In other countries it is possible to state the position of that country in reference to population growth. In the US, on the other hand, the situation oscillates from extreme to extreme depending on which political party is in power.
The Mexico City policy is a case in point. This policy, also known as the Global Gag Rule, requires all bodies that receive Federal Funding to refrain from performing or promoting abortion. This policy has required foreign non-governmental organizations to certify that they will not ‘perform or actively promote abortion or even discuss the availability of abortion with a woman with an unplanned pregnancy, even with non-US funds, as a condition of receiving US funds.
The policy was first introduced by President Reagan (Republican) in 1984, being announced in a UN conference on population in Mexico, and as a result, several international abortion agencies no longer received a portion of their funds from this source. The International Planned Parenthood Federation (IPPF) did not alter its operation and lost more than 20% of its total funding, along with other organizations that refused to comply. Until challenged in the courts, this applied to US organizations also.
Bill Clinton (Democrat) rescinded the policy in 1993, stating that it had ‘undermined efforts to promote safe and efficacious family planning programs in foreign nations’. In 2001, George W. Bush reinstated it. In 2009 it was rescinded again by Barack Obama, an act that was condemned by the Vatican almost immediately.
In January 2017 Donald Trump reinstated it, expanding it to cover all global health organizations that receive U.S. government funding, rather than only family planning organizations that do, as was previously the case.
Over the period from its first introduction, it has been expanded from dealing with abortion only to family planning in general. Critics point to the fact that lack of support of family planning will increase the number of unintended pregnancies, which in turn will increase the number of abortions, especially unsafe abortions. Over the period from its first introduction, the Global Gag Rule has expanded to include domestic health care, as well. President Trump has expanded the Rule to include Title X (ten) clinics, which provide family planning and other reproductive health care over 4000 centers in the USA. To quote the Alan Guttmacher Institute: “…the final rule eliminates Title X’s long-standing requirement that all pregnant patients be offered nondirective pregnancy options counseling, including information about parenting, adoption and abortion.”
In addition to the Gag Rule, the political right has been very hostile to women’s reproductive rights in the US. Congress has taken the first steps to unravel the Affordable Care Act and defund Planned Parenthood.
Trump’s nominees to run the Justice Department and the Department of Health & Human Services are anti-choice extremists. Tom Price, Trump’s pick for secretary of Health & Human Services, is so out of touch that he said there’s not a single woman in America who can’t afford topay for birth control. Jeff Sessions, his attorney general nominee, has supported the unconstitutional 20-week abortion ban and has even voted to protect perpetrators of anti-choice violence from court-ordered fines.
One of the very first bills passed by the House was HR7, which would ban insurance coverage of abortion in the state exchanges, even for women using their own private funds to pay for insurance. And the bill is especially cruel to low-income women, civil servants and women in the military by permanently banning their abortion coverage. They’ve also introduced legislation to ban abortion after just 6 weeks, before most women even know they’re pregnant. Another bill would give fertilized zygotes full personhood rights—a blatantly unconstitutional bill that would criminalize most forms of birth control.
Meanwhile, several states are passing legislation aimed at reducing or eliminating access to abortion. As an example, the Alabama senate has approved legislation that bans abortion at every stage of pregnancy and criminalizes the procedure for doctors, who could be charged with felonies and face up to 99 years in prison. The hope of the legislators is that this will lead to cases that are tried at federal level, and with the judiciary having been loaded with Republican supporters by Trump, this would result in the overthrow of Roe versus Wade, the case that established a right to abortion
Links: Mexico City Policy, tinyurl.com/jszds49
War on Women, tinyurl.com/jyq2ap8
Title X, tinyurl.com/z3pv86s
My thanks to Richard Grossman, our Friend in Durango, US, for checking the accuracy of this item. If you are concerned about issues of human population from a US Quaker standpoint, please subscribe to monthly essays written by Richard Grossman. You can contact him at: richard@population-matters.org. Past essays are available at: www.population-matters.org Please note that the hyphen is necessary to distinguish Richard’s site from that of the UK charity Population Matters
Zimbabwe: Chiredzi’s Rebel Women Defy Cultural Norm. An article from the Zimbabwe Herald, concerning women in Chiredzi. ‘In this part of Zimbabwe, contraception is not a matter of choice but is viewed negatively as it “erodes” cultural beliefs like that of giving birth to as many children as possible…’. ‘Here, the men will do everything and anything to stop their wives taking contraception.’ ‘Men want many children. They don’t want you to stop giving birth. When you complain, you are told that women are always wrong’.
link:- http://tinyurl.com/jjm7fyk