Friday, May 21st, 2010 - One comment

More than a right: the pill hits 50

Women who want access to contraception but are denied that right suffer illness, loss of quality of life, and even death. Let’s ensure that all women have that right.

I first met Zhazia while working on a story about Afghan widows for USAID. Like all of the women I interviewed, her prematurely wasted features spoke far more eloquently of the harshness of her existence than any words. Like many Afghan peasant girls, Zhazia was married off at the age of 13 to a man old enough to be her grandfather. Every year she dutifully gave birth to one child after another. By the time her husband died she had delivered 12—four of whom had died before they had reached the age of five. When I met her she was 29-years-old.

Countless untold stories

Zhazia’s story speaks to the reality of the countless women who are dispossessed of the means to limit the number and space their pregnancies. I have met Zhazias all over the world—in the hauntingly rugged volcanic regions of Guatemala, in rocky villages in Tajikistan, lush Mexican jungles and in the dry hinterlands of Zimbabwe. As well as having no way to regulate their own fertility, all of these women grapple with chronic ill-health—fistulas, prolapsed uteruses and other reproductive ills—in addition to an inability to properly feed, clothe and educate their children.

As of this writing, I can’t help but fear that some of these extraordinary individuals may already be dead: Expiring when their depleted bodies can no longer withstand the rigours of one more delivery, of one more infection or of one more haemorrhage.

Revolution of the Pill

Fifty years ago this month, the pill revolutionized reproductive health by providing women and their partners with the means to determine when and how many children to have. In developed countries its advent coincided with an unprecedented surge in opportunities previously denied to women and girls—and by extension, men and boys.

Today, in the developing world—where the margin between life and death is already so very narrow—an estimated 200 million women cannot access contraceptives widely available in wealthier countries. One hundred and fifty thousand maternal and 640,000 newborn deaths can be directly traced to this unmet need. These nameless women—who are impoverished, either too young or too old, living with HIV or other life-threatening conditions—cannot access the contraceptive methods that represent the very core of both reproductive health and development.

The need for contraception

Their plight spills into the next generation. Maternal death and disability means that their offspring are often unable to obtain an education, to access medical care and to receive the kind of loving attention necessary for their own well-being and development. Infants who lose their mothers are ten times more likely to die before the age of five. Too many children delivered too closely together also mean fewer resources, fewer opportunities and a greater likelihood of stunting and other developmental disorders. I’ve seen it in Afghanistan, Africa and South Asia. I’ve witnessed the pain of parents who can no do more than helplessly watch as one child after another slips into malnutrition and death.

It is also interesting to note that many of the political leaders most opposed to funding family planning programmes have availed themselves of the very same modern contraceptives that they would deny to families living in the most impoverished circumstances imaginable.

Making family planning a reality

At this year’s upcoming G-8/G-20 world leaders have an opportunity to enshrine access to family planning not only as a right, but as a reality.

Are you listening, Stephen Harper?

The views expressed in this blog-post are solely those of the author.