Each year, contraception prevents 188 million unplanned pregnancies—resulting in 112 million fewer abortions, 1.1 million fewer newborn deaths, and 150,000 fewer maternal deaths.
It’s positive benefits are enormous and impactful.
Population Institute Canada campaigns to make family planning an integral, significant part of Canadian aid programs. We know contraception is vitally important to the planet, given that our population currently numbers around 7.4 billion people and, according to recent estimates, has an 80% chance of rising continuously to 11 billion by 2100.
Conversation and Education Key
Education to remove the myths and stigma surrounding contraception is crucial to garnering increased rates of use, because a recent study showed that fear of health effects and personal, cultural or spousal opposition to contraception represented almost half the reasons women gave for not using birth control, despite their wish to avoid pregnancy.
It’s especially relevant in the developing world where up to 16 million adolescent females, aged 15 to 19, give birth annually. Sadly, pregnancy-related deaths are the leading cause of mortality for young women of this age group.
Family planning is central to gender equality and women’s empowerment, and is a key factor in reducing poverty. A preventive medicine, it could, as the UN notes, “…provide more benefits to more people at less cost than any other single available technology.”
Campaigning for the rights of couples and women around the world to have safe, affordable access to contraception is crucial. And it is increasingly evident that for this to become a reality, we need to continue the conversation about contraception and its benefits and to dispel the damaging myths surrounding it. World Contraception Day is a platform to do just that.
PIC is the voice of Canadians concerned with overpopulation and its negative human and environmental impact. Founded in 1992, it campaigns to increase support for reproductive health and education and for universal, voluntary access to family planning, which the UN notes “…could bring more benefits to more people at less cost than any other single technology available to the human race.”
Fact: Continued global population growth, together with overconsumption, is incompatible with a healthy, sustainable future for humanity and our planet. Patrons: Sir David Attenborough; Robert Bateman; Margaret Catley-Carlson; Drs. Paul & Anne Ehrlich; Robert Fowler; Dr. William Rees; Dr. David Schindler; Ronald Wright. See Patron bios. www.populationinstitutecanada.ca
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