“Unmet Need” and Pushing Contraceptives on Women in the Developing World
5/17/13
Dr. Rebecca Oas at the Turtle Bay and Beyond blog has an eye-opening article exposing the claim that there is an “unmet need” for contraceptives in the developing world and that lack of access is the reason women don’t use contraception:
A pro-abortion group recently announced the theme for its May 28th Call for Action 2013: “Access to Contraceptives is a Human Right.” In November, the United Nations Population Fund released their “State of World Population 2012: By Choice, Not By Chance – Family Planning, Human Rights and Development,” which stated:
“Recent statistics show that 867 million women of childbearing age in developing countries have a need for modern contraceptives. Of that total, 645 million have access to them. But a staggering 222 million still do not. […] The remaining 222 million women have an unmet need for contraception.”
According to the UNFPA, 100% of “unmet need” for contraceptives is attributable to lack of access. But is that really true? The facts say otherwise.
Read the whole thing to find out exactly how the researchers manipulated the data to bolster their claims. Oas goes on to say:
Why would the UNFPA focus so much of their attention on an issue affecting only 8% of the women they mean to target? Simply put, their glossy reports are intended for policymakers representing donor countries. If you’re asking for billions of dollars for family planning – $8.1 billion a year, to be exact – it’s easier to make your case in terms of providing access to one’s basic human rights than in terms of foisting contraceptives on women who are skeptical of their effects or opposed to them on principle.
But the beliefs and preferences, and even the health and safety, of women in the developing world is trumped by the ideological commitment to population control, as one investigator found:
PRI investigator Joseph Meaney, visiting a UN refugee camp in Albania in 1999, was struck by the fact that many of the Kosovo refugee women he was speaking to were eager to have more children, in part to make up for those they had lost to Serbian atrocities. When he mentioned this to a UNFPA doctor, the man exploded with disdain for his charges: “They’re refugees, don’t you see! They can’t have children!”
Read more: She shouldn’t have to choose between barrenness and death.
