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Family Planning [Folder 3]
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Melanne Verveer's Subject Files
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http://www.crip.org
The Center for Reproductive Law and Policy
Dedicated to promoting women's reproductive choices.
120 Wall Street
New York, New York 10005
USA
212-514-5534
212-514-5538 fax
The Center for Reproductive Law and Policy
http://www.crlp.org
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about CRLP
in the US
worldwide
publications
press
newsletter
support CRLP
Clinton Presidential Records
Digital Records Marker
This is not a presidential record. This is used as an administrative
marker by the William J. Clinton Presidential Library Staff.
This marker identifies the place of a publication.
Publications have not been scanned in their entirety for the purpose
of digitization. To see the full publication please search online or
visit the Clinton Presidential Library's Research Room.
Reproductive Rights are Human Rights
40
The center for Reproductive Law and Policy
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The Center for Reproductive Law and Policy
Digits KocoLqe WOLKOL
10/21/99 THU 17:23 FAX
5.
002
Copyright 1999 The New York Times Company
file family
The New York Times, October 20, 1999, Wednesday, Late Edition - Final
SECTION: Section A; Page 27; Column 2; Editorial Desk
LENGTH: 623 words
planning int'l
HEADLINE: Putting Fertility First
BYLINE: By Mary Ann Glendon and Mary Haynes; Mary Ann Glendon, a law
professor at Harvard University, and Mary Haynes are writing a book on
population control.
BODY:
There are now six billion people on the planet, we are told, and many
characterize humanity's arrival at this milestone as a catastrophe.
Family-planning activists responded to it with calls for more financing to
address the "unmet needs" of hundreds of millions of women.
According to many of these groups, supplying contraception to third world
women will provide the key to reducing the rate of growth. Yet the
population controllers' central premise -- the malleable concept of "unmet
need" -- is fundamentally flawed, and their estimates of 150 million to 500
million women of reproductive age who do not immediately desire another
child are wildly off base.
In much of the third world, contraceptives are readily accessible, yet
fertility rates remain high. According to the United Nations family planning
agency's 1999 report, 99 percent of Costa Rica's population has access to
contraception, along with 96 percent of Haiti's, 93 percent of Zimbabwe's
and 89 percent of Peru's. Yet all of these countries have fertility rates
well above the level needed to replace those who die. In the early 1990's,
demographic surveys in Kenya revealed that at least 90 percent of the
population knew where to obtain contraceptives, but only one-third of the
population chose to use them.
Donald Warwick noted in his 1982 book "Bitter Pills" that administrators of
family planning programs in developing countries were often satisfied if 10
percent of the eligible population accepted the help during the first year;
they were delighted with a rate of 20 percent.
Even when contraceptives are used, there appears to be only a loose
correlation with overall fertility. In 1989, World Bank estimates indicated
that 56 percent of Japanese women used modern contraceptives and that the
total fertility rate for Japan was 1.5 births per woman. Meanwhile, in
Turkey, contraceptive use was 63 percent but total fertility was estimated
at 3.4.
The key to understanding these statistics lies in something that population
controllers have long ignored: the desires of parents for large families. In
a 1994 study published in Population and Development Review, Lant Pritchett,
a senior World Bank economist, and Lawrence Summers, then director of
research at the World Bank (and now Treasury Secretary), found that women's
preferences about the numbers of children they will have account for up to
90 percent of differences in fertility across countries.
In many countries, helping parents achieve their desired family size would
result in higher birth rates.
For better or worse, the status of women in many societies still rests on
their success in childbearing. In Zimbabwe, the larger number of children a
woman has, the higher the status she enjoys. In Nigeria, traditional
celebrations are held for a woman on the birth of her 10th child. Among the
semi-nomadic Pokot tribe in western Kenya, women with many children are
honored after death with ritual burial, while the bodies of barren women are
1
10/21/99 THU 17:23 FAX
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003
left out for the hyenas and vultures. In India, there have been reports of
wives burned to death when they failed to produce sons.
If fertility levels in developing countries rest first and foremost on the
number of children desired by parents, then the population control movement
faces a wrenching dilemma. Purely voluntary programs will do little to
reduce fertility; only those population programs that override parental
preferences through bribes, bullying, threats or outright coercion will
lower birth rates significantly.
The six billionth human being has arrived, and population controllers must
decide whether their desired end -- reducing fertility in the third world - --
justifies the coercion that would be required.