Girls carrying water in Kenya. The quality of girls’ lives will shape population curves. (Photo: Evelyn Hockstein for The New York Times)There’s a very happy retired French teacher and tennis coach in California today. Her name is Jane Roberts. In 2002, after the Bush administration blocked $34 million Congress had approved for the United States contribution to the United Nations Population Fund, known commonly as Unfpa, she co-founded 34 Million Friends, a group trying to fill the gap $1 at a time. She wrote a book on women and human welfare, as well.
On Friday, President Obama pledged to restore that money while also signing an order reversing another move by the Bush administration that banned American government aid for family-planning organizations that, in part, promoted or conducted abortions.
I spoke with Ms. Roberts last fall about population, women and human welfare and got in touch again after the news out of the White House. Her statement reacting to Mr. Obama’s action is below. You can also hear Odetta singing a song crafted from a poem Ms. Roberts wrote about family planning, maternal welfare and human progress. Here’s a short video in which Ms. Roberts describes her campaign.
Among the hundreds of songs sung by Odetta, who died late last year (see the captivating video interview with Odetta in our “Last Word” series), there’s one based on a poem by Ms. Roberts.
Ms. Roberts got in touch with me after finding some of my coverage of population, consumption, and the uncertain path toward a stable, prospering population in the next couple of generations.
I asked her what fueled her passion for this issue.
“Women are the key,” Ms. Roberts told me.
She rattled off statistics from the most recent State of the World Population Report from the United Nations:
“Sixty percent of people living in extreme poverty are women. Two-thirds of the 960 million adults who are illiterate are women. Seventy percent of children who are out of school are girls. Scientifically speaking, women are the givers and keepers of life. Rationally you should take care of them the most.”
On Saturday, I asked her to weigh in on Mr. Obama’s move, and also asked whether 34 Million Friends would keep up its fund-raising effort now that the federal money could start flowing again. Here’s what she wrote:
As cofounder of 34 Million Friends of the United Nations Population Fund I was elated to see the Global Gag Rule gone and to see President Obama’s statement of support for UNFPA. As of Inauguration Day 2009, our grassroots movement, (begun in 2002 when the Bush Administration refused to release $34 million) asking at least one dollar from 34 million Americans, has garnered exactly $4,000,000 from hundreds of thousands of our fellow citizens. (Please see www.34millionfriends.org)
The money has permitted UNFPA to increase its support for family planning, to train doctors and midwives, to save women’s lives in childbirth, to repair obstetric fistulas, to discourage forced early marriage, and to educate the world’s adolescents about AIDS.
It is stated on the Dot Earth Blog that by 2050 the world’s population “is expected to rise to nine billion people, all of whom will be seeking food, water, and other resources.” This growth in population will exacerbate every environmental and humanitarian crisis we face today and will come in the poorest countries where fertility rates are high and women’s status is low.
Gender inequality is really at the base of population and environmental issues. In her Senate hearings to become Secretary of State, Hillary Clinton stated: “Of particular concern to me is the plight of women and girls who comprise the majority of the world’s unhealthy, unschooled, unfed, and unpaid. I say: “When the world takes care of women, women take care of the world.”
UNFPA takes care of the world’s women. It offers the family planning that allows women to choose if and when have children. In the world today, there is a vast unmet demand for family planning. Family planning can at least mitigate the worst of humanitarian and environmental crises. And by joining 34 Million Friends, Americans and others can take a stand for people and the planet.
I’ll be writing a lot more on programs and policies aimed at increasing the ability of women to have thriving families in prospering communities.
Ms. Roberts is not alone in pressing the case for action on family planning, a greater focus by scientists on clarifying population trends and their implications and a lot more resources committed to facilitating a smooth transition toward stable populations in places now seeing explosive growth (the “population cluster bombs” I wrote about early in Dot Earth).
One such effort is Global Population Speak Out, a Web-based initiative pushed by a variegated network of scientists and campaigners. I’ll write another post on that project
soon.
So, are you going to join that pledge to speak out on population? If so, why? If not, why?
(Disclaimer: I can’t. We’re not allowed, as reporters, to advocate for causes — just to describe them. ; – )