Population & Environment News Digest

U.S.: Simple Intervention May Reduce Reproductive Coercion.

A new pilot study finds that a simple intervention--asking women visiting family planning clinics about sexual violence and coercion--can dramatically reduce the incidence of a form of intimate-partner violence known as reproductive coercion.

Reproductive coercion can involve various actions by abusive spouses or partners. One example is pregnancy coercion, in which partners verbally pressure women to become pregnant. Another is birth-control sabotage, in which a partner secretly or overtly damages condoms, throws away or prevents her from using birth control pills or uses other means to force a woman to become pregnant. Intimate partner violence, including pregnancy coercion, is a widespread public health problem, both in the United States and globally.

Researchers specifically asked young women whether their partners had attempted to force them to become pregnant. The study found that young women who recently experienced partner violence had a 70% reduction in the odds that they would continue to experience pregnancy coercion following the questioning. The study participants also were 60% more likely to report ending a relationship with a partner because they felt unsafe or the relationship felt unhealthy.

This pilot study was focused on how we might better identify intimate-partner violence and reproductive coercion in clinical settings and offer women specific strategies to reduce their risk of an unwanted pregnancy and increase their safety.

The intervention was designed collaboratively with the Family Violence Prevention Fund and reproductive health experts.

While the odds of pregnancy coercion dropped by 70% for women who received the intervention, there was no significant change in the odds of pregnancy coercion for women who had not reported experiencing intimate-partner violence within the past three months, or for women who did not receive the intervention. However, awareness of intimate-partner violence-related resources increased in both the intervention group and the control group, the authors said.

Given the current critical need for effective low-cost unintended- and teen-pregnancy prevention, it is extremely encouraging that this combination of screening for reproductive coercion and abuse and providing simple educational information significantly reduced women?s pregnancy coercion.    rw

India: Azad Announces Audit of Maternal Deaths.

An audit of maternal deaths will be conducted soon in all states, said the Health Minister. "This year, we have taken another new initiative on a national level and that is the introduction of maternal death audits at the community as well as the facility level," he said. Availability of accurate data on maternal mortality was a major concern for policy makers.

"The lack of progress in improving maternal health presents itself a big global challenge," Azad said while inaugurating the three-day Global Maternal Health Conference in the national capital.    rw

'Greed Culture' Killing Planet.

The average American consumes more than his or her weight in products each day, fuelling a global culture that is emerging as the biggest threat to the planet. In its annual report, Worldwatch Institute says the cult of consumption and greed could wipe out any gains from government action on climate change or a shift to a clean energy economy.

"Until we recognise that our environmental problems, from climate change to species loss, are driven by unsustainable habits, we will not be able to solve the ecological crises."

Humanity is burning through the planet's resources at a reckless rate. The world now digs up the equivalent of 112 Empire State buildings of material every day to meet surging global demand.

The consumer culture has spread from America across the globe, with excess now accepted as a symbol of success in developing countries.

China this week overtook the US as the world's top car market.

Such trend are the result of efforts by businesses to win over consumers.

The average Western family spends more on their pet than is spent by a human in Bangladesh.

Encouraging signs are that schools are trying to encourage healthier eating habits among children; a younger generation is also more aware of their environmental impact; and US corporations such as Wal-Mart were stocking organic produce and sustainably raised fish.

It said a wholesale transformation of values and attitudes was needed to end the world's obsession with conspicuous consumption.    rw

Karen Gaia says: of course the deep economic recession will force us to curtail our overconsumption. This may help, unless population growth overtakes our efforts.

The Population-Poverty Connection.

The 21st century began on an inspiring note: the United Nations set a goal of reducing the share of the world's population living in extreme poverty by half by 2015. By early 2007 the world looked to be on track to meet this goal, but - as the economic crisis unfolds - the world will have to intensify its poverty reduction effort.

China is the big success story in reducing poverty. The number of Chinese living in extreme poverty dropped from 685 million in 1990 to 213 million in 2007. With little growth in its population, the share of people living in poverty in China dropped from 60% to 16%, an amazing achievement by any standard.

India's progress is mixed. Between 1990 and 2007, the number of Indians living in poverty increased slightly from 466 million to 489 million while the share living in poverty dropped from 51% to 42%. Despite its economic growth, averaging 9% a year for the last four years, India still has a long way to go.

Brazil has succeeded in reducing poverty with its Bolsa Familia program, that offers poor mothers up to $35 a month if they keep their children in school, have them vaccinated, and make sure they get regular physical checkups. Between 1990 and 2007, the share of the population living in extreme poverty dropped from 15% to 5%. It has in the last five years raised incomes among the poor by 22%, while incomes among the rich rose by only 5%.

Several countries in Southeast Asia have made impressive gains as well, including Thailand, Viet Nam, and Indonesia. The World Bank reported that all regions of the developing world with the notable exception of sub-Saharan Africa were on track to cut the proportion of people living in extreme poverty in half by 2015. But at the beginning of 2009, the World Bank reported that between 2005 and 2008 the incidence of poverty increased in East Asia, the Middle East, South Asia, and sub-Saharan Africa largely because of higher food prices, which hit the poor hard.

This was compounded by the global economic crisis that dramatically expanded the ranks of the unemployed at home and reduced the flow of remittances from family members working abroad. The number of extremely poor—people living on less than $1.25 a day—increased by at least 130 million. The Bank observed that "higher food prices during 2008 may have increased the number of children suffering permanent cognitive and physical injury caused by malnutrition by 44 million."

Sub-Saharan Africa, with 820 million people, is sliding deeper into poverty. Hunger, illiteracy, and disease are partly offsetting the gains in countries like China and Brazil. The failing states as a group are also backsliding; an interregional tally of the Bank's fragile states is not encouraging since extreme poverty in these countries is over 50% higher than in 1990.

Other MDGs adopted in 2000 include reducing the share of those who are hungry by half, achieving universal primary school education, halving the share of people without access to safe drinking water, and reversing the spread of infectious diseases. Closely related to these are the goals of reducing maternal mortality by three fourths and under-five child mortality by two thirds.

On the food front, the number of hungry is climbing. The long-term decline in the number of hungry and malnourished that characterized the last half of the twentieth century was reversed in the mid-1990s—rising from 825 million to roughly 850 million in 2000 and to over 1 billion in 2009. A number of factors contributed to this, but none more important than the massive diversion of grain to fuel ethanol distilleries. The U.S. grain used to produce fuel for cars in 2009 would feed 340 million people for one year.

The goal of halving the share of hungry by 2015 is not within reach if we continue with business as usual. In contrast, the number of children with a primary school education does appear to be on the rise, but with much of the progress concentrated in a handful of larger countries, including India, Bangladesh, and Brazil.

The United Nations omitted any population or family planning goals, even though as a January 2007 report from the U.K. All Party Parliamentary Group pointed out, "the MDGs are difficult or impossible to achieve with current levels of population growth in the least developed countries and regions." The United Nations has since approved a new target that calls for universal access to reproductive health care by 2015.

Countries everywhere have little choice but to strive for an average of two children per couple. There is no feasible alternative. Any population that increases indefinitely will eventually outgrow its natural life support systems. Any that decreases continually over the long term will eventually disappear.

In an increasingly integrated world with a lengthening list of failing states, eradicating poverty and stabilizing population have become national security issues. Slowing population growth helps eradicate poverty and its distressing symptoms, and, conversely, eradicating poverty helps slow population growth. With little time left to arrest the deterioration of the economy's natural support systems, the urgency of moving simultaneously on both fronts is clear.    rw

Karen Gaia says: I have been saying this all along, poverty reduction will have to come after smaller families and reduction of population growth.

US Georgia: Atlanta Case Raises Questions About Water Supply.

A federal judge ruled that Atlanta has been illegally tapping Lake Lanier for years as its primary water source. Unless Congress reclassifies the lake as a water supply, the judge ruled, Atlanta will be cut off by 2012.

The U.S. Army Corps of Engineers, which sells water from 135 federal reservoirs around the country, recently gave Congress a preliminary list of 40 projects in 14 states that were not authorized for supplying water but are being used for that purpose.

Georgia leaders are trying to rally other states as allies in pursuing new classification from Congress for all the Army Corps' lakes. But little success has been realized. At least 500,000 people in eastern Wisconsin rely on Winnebago for water, even though the corps has said that its use is not authorized.

In southern Kentucky, over 10,000 people rely on water from Laurel River Lake, which was originally built for hydropower and recreation.

In Atlanta, only after rapid population growth has the corps turned to water supply. The shift has often come on shaky legal ground.

Lanier serves about 3 million people.

The Atlanta ruling could set off a wave of new legal challenges. That's especially true with demands on water supplies growing and river systems becoming increasingly strained.    rw

Swaziland: A Culture That Encourages HIV/Aids.

Cultural beliefs among Swazis actively encourage the spread of HIV/AIDS. The study by UNFPA and Swaziland's Ministry of Health and Social Welfare echoes warnings by local NGOs that "AIDS cannot be stopped unless there is a change in people's sexual behaviour."

"Swazis are traditional people, and their sexual behaviour is inbred and totally against safe sexual practices, like condom use and monogamous relationships. The report,found that maintaining a centuries-old cultural belief in procreation to increase the population size, was having devastating consequences in the age of AIDS.

The study shows that Swazis believe it is ideal if a Swazi woman has a minimum of five children. "Nothing must stand in the way of procreation. This belief had come about when the population was a tenth of its present size. Swazis still believe that a woman's role is to bear children continuously, and that a man's role is to impregnate multiple partners, which is why polygamy is so strong here. In the minds of young men, who may not ever get married they can still have many children from multiple girlfriends.

A survey of nearly 2,000 women found that 42% tested HIV positive in 2008, up 3% from 2006.

In 2000 life expectancy was 61 years; now it is 32 years.Women report that they have been subjected to continuous childbirth by their husbands or in-laws, against their will.

In Swazi culture, decision-making has traditionally been a male prerogative and Swazi men strongly defended the practice of "kungena", or wife inheritance, whereby a widow becomes the wife of the deceased man's brother, a practice found to spread HIV.

Another cultural factor was gender preference - often insisted upon by in-laws that a woman bear a boy. In traditional law only a boy can lead a family into its next generation.

Swaziland is mainly rural, but in the northern Hhohho Region, where the capital, Mbabane, is located, the fertility rate is 3.6 children per female, compared to 4.3 children in the underdeveloped southern Shiselweni Region. The fertility rate among women whose education finished at primary school was 5.1, but only 2.4 - less than half the number of children - among students who advanced to tertiary education. The poorest Swazi women have a fertility rate of 5.5, while the figure among the richest is only 2.6 children.

"The rich/poor fertility divide is testament to the lack of a government social safety net - like a good pension scheme for the elderly - so, for those without assets, their only security comes from lots of children, who together can support their parents when they are older," said Tanya Kunene, a social welfare officer in Manzini Region.

The study found that, like many traditional societies, Swazis lived in isolation and were generally suspicious of other cultures - practices like monogamy.That may be changing. According to the study, some survey participants "called for the recognition of multiculturalism in Swaziland, which would create tolerance for other cultures co-existing with our own", and thus make "foreign" practices found to be effective in curbing HIV/AIDS more acceptable.    rw

Wisconsin Makes Push on Free Birth Control.

Wisconsin is pushing to expand a program that uses federal Medicaid funds to provide free contraception to low-income people. It and 26 other states already provide free contraception and other reproductive-health services through a Medicaid pilot project to lower-earning women who otherwise wouldn't qualify.

Among other things, the women get access to prescription birth control, Pap smears, testing for sexually transmitted diseases and, in some states, infertility treatments. Women qualify for Wisconsin's program if they make up to $21,600 a year for single people - twice the federal poverty level.

The state touts it as cost-effective. The state's Medicaid director credits it with preventing unplanned pregnancies that "I don't think anybody wants." But critics point out that it allows girls and boys as young as 15 to participate without having to notify their parents.

Now Wisconsin wants to widen the reach of its plan. A provision in the health-care law allows states to make their plans permanent and get federal funding faster. Wisconsin applied to raise the qualifying limit to $32,490.

"That's just insane," said Julaine Appling, president of Wisconsin Family Action, a conservative lobbying group. "That is a whole new segment of our population that is now seeking reproductive health care on taxpayer money."    rw

Earth to Fred: of Course Population is Still a Problem.

Fred Pearce keeps on saying that population growth is no longer a problem. Fertility rates have come down sharply over the past half century, he says, but, while admitting that world population may increase by another 2 billion or so by midcentury, he dismisses this increment as a "time-lag" problem.

2 billion more people is a lot of people to a world that is struggling to feed 6.8 billion people and it's a lot of people to a biosphere that is threatened with what leading biologists refer to as the Sixth Mass Extinction. And it's a lot of people to a planet that is already threatened with the effects of climate change.

Fertility rates in many developing countries around the world are still well above the "replacement rate, and unless we in the developed world do more to curb our consumption of fossil fuels and scarce minerals, the world is headed for an ecological and humanitarian disaster. We need to lower our per capita consumption of fossil fuels and other scarce resources. But the G8 or the G20 don't seem to be trying to lower consumer spending.

And that's why it's especially important to prevent unwanted pregnancies. It doesn't matter that America's fertility rate is at the "replacement rate" or that Europe's is well below it. A baby born here or elsewhere in the developed world will still consume a disproportionate share of the world's resources and contribute disproportionately to the world's environmental problems.

It's important to prevent unwanted pregnancies in the developing world, but the reasons are different. It doesn't matter whether global fertility rates have dropped sharply; they remain unsustainably high in many of the least developed areas of the world. Women in Afghanistan and Somalia and other desperately poor countries are still having four, five, or six children on average. Some poor countries, like Uganda and Niger, are on track to triple their populations over the next 40 years. Africa's population will likely double by mid-century.

Looking ahead, will these countries be able to feed themselves, ave enough safe drinking water? Will their lands be deforested or their rivers polluted? Will their maternal mortality rates and infant mortality rates remain unacceptably high? Will they be caught in a demographic poverty trap? Will they become failed states? We need to ensure that women in these developing countries are given the information and the access to contraceptives that they need to prevent unwanted and unintended pregnancies.

Someday every woman will have access to family-planning services and reproductive health care. Someday world population will be in decline. Someday world population levels will pose no danger to the health of the planet. But that day has not arrived.    rw

Population Explosion Scrutinised as Scientists Urge Politicians to Act.

Britain's premier scientific organisation, The Optimum Population Trust, has launched a two-year study into global population levels. A growing body of scientists believe the time has come for politicians to confront the problems posed by the future increase in human numbers.

The Royal Society has established a working group of leading experts to draw up a set of recommendations on human population that could set the agenda for tackling the environmental stress caused by billions of extra people on the planet.

We really do have to look at where we are going in relation to population. If we don't do it, we may survive but we won't flourish. We will be examining the extent to which population is a significant factor in the challenge of securing global sustainable development, considering not just the scientific elements but encompassing the wider issues including culture, gender, economics and law.

The planet's population stands at 6.8 billion and although fertility rates in most countries are falling, the number of young people alive now who are destined to become parents in the future suggests that this figure could rise to 8.3 billion by 2030 and 9.2 billion by 2050.

Human numbers have shot up since the Industrial Revolution. In 1800, there were about a billion people, and by 1900 the figure was 1.7 billion. It then multiplied four-fold to six billion within a century, powered by advances in medicine and public health, cheap fossil fuels and a technical revolution in food production.

Much of the coming increase in human numbers will be in the poorest developing countries, notably in sub-Saharan Africa, where the population is set to rise by about 50% over the coming decades. Scientists estimate that food and energy production will have to increase by 50% and water availability by 30% to meet the demand caused by the extra 1.5 billion people living on Earth in the next two decades - an increase of nearly 10,000 people per hour.

Many countries have already exceeded their capacity to be self-sustainable without having to import resources. 77 out of 130 countries that have been studied can be classified as "overpopulated" based on the fact they are consuming more natural resources than they are producing. Britain's "ecological footprint" shows that it comes 17th in the table of overpopulated nations, which are dominated by the high-consuming countries of the Middle East and Europe.

If Britain had to rely on its biological resources, its sustainable population would be about 15 million rather than the present 60 million.

"Overpopulation is a much used and abuse word, but we believe the index helps to anchor it firmly in the realm of sustainability; of people living within the limits of the place they inhabit."

The "ecological footprint" was developed more than 15 years ago. It is a measure of the demand placed on the biosphere by human activity, calculating the amount of biologically productive land and water area required to produce all the resources that an individual, population or activity consumes, and also to absorb the waste they generate, given prevailing technology and resource management. The "footprint" is measured in global hectares, or average world productivity, allowing one area or population to be compared with another.    rw

How BP Gulf Disaster May Have Triggered a 'World-Killing' Event.

Northwestern University's Gregory Ryskin, has a theory: The oceans periodically produce massive eruptions of explosive methane gas. He has documented the evidence that such an event was responsible for the mass extinctions that occurred 55 million years ago.

BP's Deepwater Horizon drilling operation may have triggered such an irreversible, cascading geological Apocalypse that will culminate with the first mass extinction of life on Earth in many millions of years.

The warning signs would be the appearance of large fissures or rifts splitting open the ocean floor, a rise in the elevation of the seabed, and the massive venting of methane and other gases into the surrounding water.

The people and property located on the greater expanse of the Gulf Coast will be the first exposed to poisonous, cancer causing chemical gases and the full fury of a methane bubble exploding from the ruptured seabed.

Methane is now streaming through the porous, rocky seabed at an accelerated rate and gushing from the borehole of the first relief well. The EPA is on record that Rig #1 is releasing methane, benzene, hydrogen sulfide and other toxic gases. Workers there now wear advanced protection including state-of-the-art, military-issued gas masks.

Reports state that the upper level strata of the ocean floor is succumbing to greater and greater pressure causing a huge expanse of the seabed-to bulge. Some claim the seabed in the region has risen an astounding 30 feet. The subterranean methane pressure at the wellhead has now skyrocketed to a 40,000 pounds psi.

Another expert has calculated that the ruptured well is spewing 60% oil and 40% methane. Other fissures, have been spotted as far as 30 miles distant.

Methane levels in the water are now calculated as being almost one million times higher than normal. If the methane bubble erupts, the ocean bottom will collapse, displacing up to a trillion cubic feet of water or more and creating a towering supersonic tsunami annihilating everything along the coast and well inland. Like a thermonuclear blast, a high pressure atmospheric wave could precede the tidal wave flattening everything in its path before the water arrives.

While some say the frozen underground methane sea is gradually melting from the nearby surging oil that's estimated to be as hot as 500 degrees Fahrenheit.

If the world-changing event does occur it will happen suddenly and within the next 6 months.    rw

Karen Gaia says: we are still here, so maybe this is an exaggeration. But what about next time? Can we afford to keep doing this kind of drilling?

Philippines: Why Population Matters - Now More Than Ever.

Philippine population is projected to reach 112 million in another ten years. Dr. Mercedes B. Concepcion was conferred the rank and title of National Scientist in recognition of her achievements in the field of demographics and population. She was instrumental in crafting the country's national population policy which led to the creation of the Commission on Population, on whose board she still sits. She has watched Manilla expand from a small suburb to the large Metro Manila. And she has seen the population policy regress. "We're back almost to where we were in the 1970s," notes Concepcion.

When Marcos was ousted, the total fertility rate went down to about 4.5. Now it's about 3.3. Conception hopes that incoming president Noynoy Aquino will take a more progressive stance on population. Under President Corazon Aquino, conservative elements in the Catholic hierarchy cut off funding and support for the program.

Concepcion says of the incoming president: "He cannot alleviate poverty without doing something about population. It has to be a two-pronged approach: population management on the one hand, and poverty reduction on the other. When you reduce poverty you have to improve education, job creation, improve infrastructure - they're all connected. Until you can create jobs that give a better income, the level of living will not improve. Income growth is important, and if you do not manage population so that income is divided among less people, you cannot move forward."

The Church agrees that something has to be done to improve the conditions of the poor, but they say it should not be done in terms of contraception, and that it can only be done with natural family planning.

"We are saying, let the couples decide. If they decide to use natural family planning, so be it, but if they opt for one of the artificial methods, help them." There is a difference of one child between the desired family size of the poor and their actual number of children. Until that gap is closed, we will still have a problem.    rw

Solar is Cheaper Than Coal.

A new report called the "Hidden Costs of Energy: Unpriced Consequences of Energy Production and Use", is the most thorough cost accounting of energy sources.

It shows how coal and other fossil fuels create enormous costs that the rest of us pay for. Whether we know it or not. The National Academy of Sciences reports that the damages from coal costs us $62 billion a year - 25% to 100% of what we pay for electricity from coal.

Those who say wind and solar are too expensive to compete with coal confuse price with cost. The hidden costs of oil are even larger. When you add up all the costs of all the different kinds of energy, solar and wind are often less expensive than fossil fuels. And the price of solar is going down, while the costs of coal and oil are going up.    rw

Syria Grapples with Surging Population.

Many men in Syria say it is up to Allah whether more children arrive, even if they complaing about how much money they earn.

Syria has a population of 20 million people, with a growth rate that remains one of the world's highest at about 2.4%, but it has declined 3.2% from 1947-94.

A Syrian economist said: "We have a problem, it could be a burden on our development."

Labor has been growing 4.5% a year, outpacing job creation for .25 million youngsters on the job market every year. Perhaps in 20 years the growth rate will go down to 1.5% as in Egypt. The official unemployment rate is around 10%, but independent estimates put it up to 25% percent.

Syrian women have an average of 3.6 children each. Fertility rates are expected to fall from 2 - 2.5 children per woman now to 1.4 - 2 by 2025.

In the seven least-developed governorates, women have between 3.8 and 6.2 children and they are not expected to decline much in the next 15 years.

Urbanization and education, especially among girls and women, are the most potent forces that curb population growth.

Religion is irrelevant. Development brings education, which is a crucial factor because it increases the cost of raising children. Syria has modernized more slowly than Lebanon, where fertility is below the replacement rate.

Contact with the outside world gives people a taste for cars or other goods they can only afford by having fewer children.

Young people may be delaying marriage partly because they spend years in higher education and partly because they then cannot meet the traditional marriage costs.

In rural areas, families are often large because it is relatively cheap to raise children until they start earning money.

Until people who lack knowledge or access to contraceptives desire fewer children, family planning advice is likely to fall on deaf ears.    rw

Population Research Presents a Sobering Prognosis.

With 267 people being born every minute and 108 dying, the world's population will top seven billion next year, while the ratio of working-age adults to support the elderly in developed countries declines because of lower birthrates and longer life spans.

The president of the Population Reference Bureau, said that "chronically low birthrates in developed countries are beginning to challenge the health and financial security of the elderly" at the same time that "developing countries are adding over 80 million to the population each year and the poorest of those countries are adding 20 million."

Even with a decline in birthrates in less developed countries from 6 children per woman in 1950 to 2.5 today (and to 2 children or less in Brazil, Chile, Cuba, Iran, Thailand and Turkey), the population of Africa is projected to at least double to 2.1 billion. Asia will add an additional 1.3 billion.

While the United States, Australia, Canada and New Zealand will continue to grow because of higher birthrates and immigration, Europe, Japan and South Korea will shrink. In Japan, the population of working-age people, those 15 to 64, compared with the population 65 and older that is dependent on this younger group, is projected to decline to a ratio of one to one, from the current three to one. Worldwide, the ratio of working age people for every person in the older age group is expected to decline to four to one, from nine to one now.

The European Union reported that while the union's population topped a half billion this year, 900,000 of the 1.4 million growth from the year before resulted from immigration. Eurostat has predicted that deaths will outpace births in five years, a trend that has already occurred in Bulgaria, Latvia and Hungary.

While the bulge in younger people, if they are educated, presents a potential "demographic dividend" for countries like Bangladesh and Brazil, the shrinking proportion of working-age people elsewhere may place a strain on governments and lead them to raise retirement ages and to encourage alternative job opportunities for older workers.

In the US, the proportion of the gross domestic product spent on Social Security and Medicare is projected to rise to 14.5% in 2050, from 8.4% this year.

By 2050, Russia and Japan would be bumped from the 10 most populous countries by Ethiopia and the Democratic Republic of Congo.    rw

Contraceptive Pill First Sold in U.S. 50 Years Ago.

50 years ago today, the first contraceptive pill, called Evonid was introduced in the U.S.

In 1960, when the pill was introduced, few women worked outside the home, families were large and surprises were expected. For many women, having sex came with the fear of an unwanted pregnancy.

Then, unmarried women could rarely buy Evonid, and prescriptions for the pill were made out to the husband.

In 1960, the average U.S. birthrate was 3.6 children; by 1980 that number had dropped to below two.

Before the pill, people were using abortion as a form of birth control

The pill allowed a woman to plan her family, space out her pregnancies and improved her health.

In 1965, 26.2 million women went to work; by 2008, the number had risen to 71.8 million, according to the U.S. Census Bureau.

The pill also uncoupled sex and reproduction and started a revolution.

The pill also protected from ovarian cancer, endometriosis, and polycystic ovary syndrome, the later which interferes with the ability to have children.

By 1965, the pill was available nationwide and was the most popular reversible form of birth control. Today, almost 20% of the 60% of women using birth control take the pill. This is followed by female sterilization - 16%, condoms - 11%, and male sterilization - 6%.

Lower hormone doses allowed researchers to create implants and skin patches.

"From a public perception, it has allowed women to be sexually active maybe before they should," Thornton said. "We encourage women to put off sexual activity for as long as they can.  

Burkina Faso: Women's Economic Empowerment Key to Girls' Education.

A new government program to keep girls in school by supporting income-generating activities for their mothers is showing success in Burkina Faso, where poverty and cultural values still deprive many girls of an education.

Often, even having to buy notebooks and pens is enough to stop a child from going to school and enough to get a girl married off to a husband.

The 300 chapter Association of Mothers Who Teach (AME) was created to consolidate the success of a 2007 campaign to raise awareness of the importance of girls' education.

Mothers are encouraged to support schools because they are the ones who keep the girls at home to help with economic and domestic activities.

The school completion rate in Burkina Faso is among the lowest on the continent, especially for girls. Only 42% of students who enter grade one complete their primary education; for girls, it is 37.

In the country's northern Sahel region, where the ministry focuses its outreach activities, just 18% of girls complete their education.

"Getting girls to stay in school is the challenge, especially in the context of arranged marriages. We know that if the wife can read, it's a first battle won for girls' education," said one expert.

The United Nations Childrens Fund (UNICEF) backs income-generating activities such as the sale of milk, and raising goats and sheep, of which a portion is reinvested in the children's education. For example, one AME bought lamps and oil, thus enabling poorer students to study at night.

In one AME area, the enrollment rate for girls ispresently 66%, compared to just 15% in 2003.

If the AME members suspect a plan for an arranged marriage, they will report the matter to the school principal very quietly and they take many discreet actions to prevent early or forced marriages.

Men who challenge the women in the AME, are told: "It not only helps girls themselves if they attend school, but it can help their future husbands one day; this is so fathers won't give their daughters away in early marriage when they have money problems."  

U.S.: New Health Reform Law Will Benefit 30 Million Women, Study Says.

The new national health reform law (PL 111-148) is estimated to benefit thirty million women according to the Commonwealth Fund. The law will help 15 million uninsured women gain access to subsidized coverage and also will improve cost and quality issues for 14.5 million women who are currently insured.

15 million of the 17 million uninsured U.S. women will be able to obtain health coverage with federal assistance. Once eligibility is expanded 7.5 million will qualify for Medicaid, while the other 7.5 million will benefit from government subsidies to purchase insurance on the state insurance exchanges that will be established in 2014.

Almost 40% of women who attempted to purchase coverage through the individual insurance market over a 3 year period were either rejected, charged higher prices than other consumers or denied due to a pre-existing medical condition.

Care for pregnant women is included. Nearly 90% of health plans on the individual market currently lack maternity coverage.

Other benefits to women include the extension of family coverage to young adult children, a ban on lifetime coverage limits, phased-in restrictions on annual benefit limits, improved coverage of preventive services and $250 rebate checks for prescription coverage for some Medicare beneficiaries.  

When Teen Pregnancy is No Accident; New Studies Suggest That Many Partners of Young Women Are Coercing Pregnancy, Or Sabotaging Attempts at Prevention.

Some boyfriends of teen girls have been known to hide their birth control pills, along with beating them or locking them in a closet if they find the pills in their possession.

Other boyfriends insist on an abortion of their girl friend becomes pregnant, continuously harrassing the girl if she continues the pregnancy.

Expert researchers on dating violence and unintended pregnancy say such stories are all too common. Two new studies have shown the striking frequency with which young men who try to force their partners to get pregnant, not to settle down as family men but rather to exert control. This control may include attempts to force both pregnancy and abortion, even in the same relationship. This phenomenon is called "reproductive coercion," in which abusive partners subject young women already at risk of violence to the additional health risks of pregnancy and sexually transmitted infections.

We must now understand not only who's forcing whom to get pregnant but also the meaning and causes of "unwanted" pregnancy. "If we are serious about stopping unplanned pregnancy in this country, we simply must address the sexual violence and reproductive control that often cause it," says Esta Soler, president of the Family Violence Prevention Fund, which has been a leading advocate on the issue.

In a study of women aged 18-49 with a history of intimate partner violence, 74% reported having experienced some form of reproductive control, including forced unprotected intercourse, failure to withdraw as promised or sabotaging of condoms, and threats of violence if they had an abortion.

The study authors recommend that service providers in women's health clinics offer birth control (such as IUDs) that can be hidden from partners if reproductive coercion is suspected.

In a study of 1,300 16-29 year old women, "Pregnancy Coercion, Intimate Partner Violence and Unintended Pregnancy," published in the January issue of the journal Contraception. Women seeking services at five different Northern

California reproductive health clinics were surveyed. Among those who had experienced intercourse, 53% ssid they'd experienced physical or sexual violence from a partner, and 20% said they had experienced pregnancy coercion; 15% said they experienced birth control sabotage, including hiding or flushing birth control pills down the toilet, intentional breaking of condoms and removing contraceptive rings or patches.

In January, the Guttmacher Institute reported that between 2005 and 2006 the pregnancy rate among girls ages 15 to 19 had jumped for the first time since 1990, by a factor of 3%. "There are a multitude of reasons for the recent increase in teen pregnancy," ... "Reproductive coercion may be one piece of the puzzle."

Recent research demonstrates that there's a clear need for relationship violence prevention to be integrated into pregnancy prevention and sexual health curricula. Preventing unwanted pregnancy appears to be about more than making contraception available.

"It's imperative that we teach kids comprehensive sex ed that includes awareness of violence and coercion. The more we can help them understand what constitutes a good relationship and where you go for help when something's not good, the more they have a fighting chance," says Debra Hauser, executive vice president of Advocates For Youth.

In 2009 President Obama signed into law a $114.5 million teen pregnancy prevention initiative based on medically accurate, research-based information. $75 million is reserved for programming already proven effective, and at least $25 million is earmarked for research and testing of innovative new approaches.

The Family Violence Prevention Fund has just launched a $3 million violence-prevention initiative called Project Connect, designed to find new ways to identify and respond to domestic and sexual violence, including reproductive coercion. Working with ten state health departments and violence-prevention advocacy groups nationwide, the fund will train staff at family planning, adolescent health, home visitation and other maternal child health programs to understand domestic violence and reproductive coercion so that they recognize it when they see it and know how to help.  

Women and Higher Education Make Steady Progress in Afghanistan.

Even some women from remote provinces of Afghanistan a allowed to attend Afghanistan's largest and most prestigious university in Kabul. However, professors are in short supply, and computers and other electronic equipment remain scarce. 7,000 students are enrolled; about 1,700 are women.

The number of young people enrolled in higher education has increased more than tenfold since 2001. Kabul University used to be a prime intellectual and scientific center for all of Asia, but during the mujahedeen phase of Afghanistan's civil war, from 1992 to 1996, the campus became a battlefield.

When the Taliban came to power in 1996, many professors fled, and women were banned from education. Since Soviet forces invaded in 1979, about one million Afghans have died, and six million more have been displaced. 70% of the university professors had to leave the country controlled by Taliban.

Since the Taliban were routed by U.S. forces in 2001, changes for women have been sweeping. In some sections of the university young women wear jeans or other pants, jackets, and light scarves. There are women professors, some who travel the world and go to the U.S. for exchange programs.

However, in most Afghani provinces, mullahs do not allow women to study. That is one of the reasons why most of Afghanistan remains illiterate and unemployed. The majority of Afghan people still do not understand enough the value of education.

Female graduates often prefer to leave the country to look for work.

Foreign financial support provides significant resources for higher education here. The World Bank, Russia, and the USAID have invested or pledged money for higher education.  

Australia Donates Birth Kits for Flood-hit Pregnant Pakistani Women.

Australia has donated 1,962 safe delivery kits to Pakistan to support maternal and reproductive health services to displaced pregnant women in the flood-affected areas.

Community midwives and other skilled birth attendants will use these kits to conduct deliveries for women displaced by the floods. The UNFPA also has, in the area, mobile service vans which are fully equipped with doctors, paramedical staff and medical supplies being sponsored by UNFPA.

Additional Secretary of Ministry of Health Agha Nadeem recognized that in emergency situations like this, some aspects of health care like provision of maternity services to pregnant women are neglected and their lives are endangered.  

Ella, Morning After Pill Approved by FDA in Tablet Form.

Ella is a new morning after - or emergency contraception - pill that has been approved by the US Food and Drug Administration (FDA). It prevents prevents pregnancy if taken within five days after unprotected sexual intercourse.

The pill, comprised of ulipristal acetate, can be obtained by prescription only

The FDA stressed that people should not use Ella as a contraceptive.

Ella inhibits or delays ovulation. It has been sold in Europe since May 2009 under the name EllaOne.

Women don't use emergency contraception enough to make an impact on pregnancy or abortion rates, Dr. James Trussell of the Office of Population Research said.

Ella package side effects: headache, abdominal pain, nausea, dysmenorrhea, fatigue, dizziness  

Sen. Boxer Focuses on Abortion Rights in Calif. Race.

Although the economy and jobs have been the "foremost" issues in California's Senate race, Sen. Barbara Boxer (D) is "intent on highlighting the distinction" between her views on abortion rights and those of her Republican opponent, Carly Fiorina, the AP/San Jose Mercury News reports.

A new poll from the Public Policy Institute of California shows 39% of likely voters support Boxer -- who supports abortion rights in early stages of pregnancy -- while 34% favor Fiorina, who opposes abortion except in cases or rape, incest or to save a woman's life.

Boxer has been endorsed by Planned Parenthood Affiliates of California, NARAL Pro-Choice California, EMILY's List and the National Organization for Women. Fiorina has received endorsements from the antiabortion-rights groups California Pro-Life Council, the Susan B. Anthony List and National Right to Life.

Boxer says she knows that abortion is an issue that "can help drive voters her way." A director of the poll said that the issue could work in Boxer's favor if she can portray Fiorina's views as a threat to the status quo. 53% of Fiorina's supporters consider themselves "pro-choice," according to a recent poll.  

Senate Committee Approves Permanent Ban on Global Gag Rule.

Late July, the Senate Appropriations Committee adopted an amendment which permanently repeals the notorious Global Gag Rule, preventing a future President from unilaterally reinstating the policy. President Obama repealed the Gag Rule in the first week of his presidency, but the fact that the policy could be reinstated with the next Presidency has a chilling effect on US family planning efforts overseas. The amendment passed by a vote of 19-11.

The Committee also approved $700 million for international family planning, including $55 million for the United Nations Population Fund (UNFPA). The amount is $50 million over the current funding level, but less than the $716 million requested by President Obama, and less than the $735 million approved by a House subcommittee.

The amendment has not yet come before the full Senate.  

Human Carrying Capacity and Human Health.

The silence around overpopulation prevents the global health community from making the necessary link between the planet's limited ability to support its people and health and development crises. The question has been controversial for over two centuries. In 1798 the Reverend Thomas Malthus put forward the hypothesis that population growth would exceed the growth of resources.

Soon after 1934, the global population began to rise steeply as antibiotics, vaccines, and technology increased life expectancy. By the 1960s, concerns of a mismatch between global population and global food supply peaked.

In 1966, United States President Lyndon Johnson shipped wheat to India to avert a famine on the condition that the country accelerate its already vigorous family planning campaign. But the 1970s surprised population watchers. Instead of being a period shadowed by calamitous famine, the new crop strains introduced by the "Green Revolution" (especially grains such as rice,

wheat, and maize) caused a dramatic increase in the global production of cereals, the main source of energy in the global diet. By the end of the decade, the public health community felt sufficiently empowered to proclaim "Health for All by the Year 2000". Average life expectancy continued to zoom upwards almost everywhere — even in sub-Saharan Africa.

The introduction of safe contraception contributed to a rapid fertility decline in many countries. But while the rate of global population growth declined from its peak in the late 1960s, the absolute increment of increase in annual global population continued to grow.

The 1970s can be seen as the decade when concern about overpopulation started to fade. The social and economic milieu, especially in the US, started to change. US foreign aid declined from the late 1960s.

The world oil shock in 1973 contributed to a combination of rising unemployment with higher prices — and to increased economic power for the oil-producing countries of the Third World.

Reagan's policies were to cement a new orthodoxy about global overpopulation and development strategies. In the same year, the US surprised the family planning world by abdicating its leadership in the effort to promote global family planning. The US took this position against the opposition of the Population Association of America, which represented many US demographers.

As foreign aid budgets fell, the "Health for All" targets began to slip from reach. The increased domestic inequality of recent decades in developed countries probably also contributed to a reduction in concern for the Third World. It is clear that market deregulation and high birth rates have proven disastrous in many Third World countries.

Overpopulation is hardly considered, except by dissident public health workers, the discipline that would appear to be the most likely holder of the Malthusian baton, is now almost entirely silent about overpopulation in developing countries. On the other hand, the role of the transition in China from large to small families, with an average of two or fewer children is rarely credited as central to the Chinese economic miracle.

The silence on overpopulation is the "Hardinian Taboo", named after the American ecologist Garett Hardin, who described the taboos that humans use to avoid confronting the need for population control. Social norms inhibit debate about overpopulation in one of the world's most intractable trouble spots, Israel and Palestine.

Human carrying capacity is the maximum population that can be supported at a given living standard. This apparently simple concept has many nuances and is rarely used by population scientists. It is irrefutable that human ingenuity and cooperation can increase human carrying capacity . But even so, human welfare will continue to depend on the external world, including for resources such as food and water.    rw

Karen Gaia says: Again, the term 'population control', which implies the author thinks that some kind of control is necessary. What really works, and has been proven, is enabling people to choose their own family size - strictly voluntary, without pressure.

Strange but True: How Soap Operas Might Save Us From Overpopulation.

Daniela Perdomo interviews Bill Ryerson of Population Media Center (PMC).

Human capacity was exceeded in the 1980s, bringing the planet into crisis. Global warming, food and water crises, even international conflict, can be traced to overpopulation. Natural resources are being consumed at a rate much higher than they can be replenished. Now at over 6.8 billion people in the world, we're expected to number 9 billion by 2050.

Bill Ryerson is using media to change behaviors that contribute to global overpopulation by using melodramatic soap operas on radio and television throughout the developing world (and soon, the U.S.) to teach listeners and viewers important lessons about family planning, reproductive health, HIV/AIDS and environmental preservation, and women's and children's rights.

Africa has the least media coverage, particularly with television. In Ethiopia over half have radios and listen to them on a regular basis. So it's a majority of the world's population that has access to broadcasting. Latin America and in Asia, television reaches almost everybody. 90% of the Vietnam population watches TV. In Pakistan maybe two-thirds of the population watches TV on a regular basis.

Population Media Center uses the Sabido method, which used the Latin American version of soap operas, called telenovelas, or television novels. These are quite different from American soap operas because they are much shorter. They are the dominant prime-time format in Latin America and they are popular and engrossing. They are also melodramatic -- depicting the battle of good versus evil.

Miguel Sabido was a vice president of Mexico's largest commercial network, Televisa. He began looking at ways in which he could use the telenovela to provide audiences with information that would improve their lives. Using research and theory from psychologists, the creation of serialized melodramas that has proven over and over again to be highly influential in changing social norms on all kinds of issues.

Stanford psychologist Alfred Bandura is the world's authority on role modeling and how role models influence behavior and what makes a parent or a peer or a celebrity influence the people who are observing them. Using role models, the telenovela teaches self-efficacy, the confidence in the ability to accomplish some task.

Where girls are denied education and are married off at puberty to older men in polygamous relationships and are not given the right to determine how many children to have and so on, changing the attitudes and behavior of the men as well as the women can be done through this strategy.

Characters are created who start out in the middle of the road and sort through the conflicting advice they get from the positive and the negative characters and figure out who is right, and they evolve into positive role models for the audience. The negative characters always suffer the consequences of their behavior.

The Sabido method is now in 24 countries around the world. In Brazil, a program called "Páginas da Vida," "Pages of Life,"contained a teenage pregnancy and parenthood storyline. This program influenced thirty-six% of the women clients of the family planning clinics to come because of that program. These women did not want to fall into the trap and the poverty and all the health problems that this teenage mother had fallen into. So they learned from that and they went to family planning. As a result of this program here was a 153% increase in condom distribution.

In Tanzania a radio serial depicted an alcoholic truck driver with a girlfriend at every truck stop and a subservient wife waiting at home. His wife figured him out during the serial and told him she had heard about the AIDS epidemic and said that when he was home he was going to have to use condoms. She went on to become an entrepreneur and founded her own business, and she became a role model for female empowerment.

The truck driver became sick. 58% of the adult population heard this program, with more men in the audience than women, and they found out the truck driver had made a fatal mistake. Originally the men identified with the truck driver because he was having a good time, but then he started dying from AIDS. 82% of the audience in a survey after the two years said they had changed their behavior to avoid HIV infection. Most of them reduced the number of sexual partners. The second most common change was condom use.

Ryerson said: "This is the most cost-effective approach that I have found anywhere in the world." In the Tanzania project, the cost per person who adopted family planning was 32 cents. The cost per person to change behavior to avoid HIV infection was 8 cents. When you can save lives at 8 cents a person, it is worth doing something.

In Sudan, PMC developed a program where the major emphasis was on female genital mutilation. Before the program, 28% of the adult population thought FGM was a bad idea. After the broadcast, 65% of the population thought the practice should be abandoned.

The Global Footprint Network have determined is our ecological footprint is 40% over what is sustainable. We are taking resources out of the bank and not replacing them. Water is one of the key resources: India, China and the United States are the top grain-producing countries, all three using underground fresh water aquifers for irrigation, as well as using river water for irrigation.

India, for example, is pumping out the water at twice the rate of replacement by rain water, and the water table is sinking by 10 feet a year. Large areas of farmland in India are turning into desert. With the melting of the glaciers in the Himalayas, the regular flow of the rivers in India and China are also threatened.

Cheap oil is a key element in fertilizers and pesticides and in planting, harvesting, transportation to market, refrigeration, packaging, distribution to supermarkets and taking it home and serving it, but oil reached an all-time peak two years ago. The price of grain and of both rice and wheat tripled and quadrupled on the world market, and there were food riots all over the developing world. When production of oil goes into decline in the face of expanding demand, the price of oil is going to go way up. The billion people living on a dollar or less a day may not be able to buy enough food to survive.

We have gotten all the easy oil there is to get. Now we are drilling 5,000 feet below the surface of the ocean, high-risk operations trying to get the last bits of oil. The increase from one billion to almost seven billion people on the planet has occurred since the discovery of oil.

Terrorism is partly a population-related issue. In high-population growth countries people are spending all of their money on food, housing and clothing. They have nothing left over to save. That means there is no capital formation. That means businesses can't expand. Therefore, there is no growth in employment. So you have a rapid growth in the number of people trying to enter the labor force and no jobs.

In urban centers like Karachi and Islamabad hundreds and thousands of unemployed men walking around angry and very concerned as to how they are going to survive.They are great prospects for recruiting into terrorism because they have nothing to lose.

PMC is planning a project available online to serve the Hispanic population in the U.S. to address the issues of teenage pregnancy prevention and obesity prevention among Latino populations.  

New Documentary Film Projects: Pushing Ten Billion and Hooked on Growth.

"Pushing Ten Billion" is the working title of a film by Joyce Johnson and Chris Fauchere of Tiroir A Films which uses a holistic approach to the environmental effects caused by overpopulation in the US and abroad. With real-life stories of women and families around the world, the film will unfold the many layers of today's population crisis and its relationship to most of our modern environmental and social problems and offers concrete, innovative and holistic approaches to solving the problem. See an overview clip from the film at http://www.pushing10.tiroirafilms.net/ . Contact Population Media Center to make tax deductible donations, contact Population Media Center.

Dave Gardner of Hooked on Growth has produced the trailer for a population growth documentary which was a big hit at the Population Strategy Meeting in Washington DC in October. Distribution will be by a grass roots network. A video offering a more in-depth glimpse of what this film will cover can be found at http://vimeo.com/6648857 . Hooked on Growth focuses on "How can we become a truly sustainable civilization?"  

India: A Reproductive Health Communication Model That Helps Improve Young Women's Reproductive Life and Reduce Population Growth.

Implementation of a reproductive health communication model called PRACHAR could result in 64 million fewer people being added to the population of India. PRACHAR is a reproductive health communication model found to be successful in delaying age at marriage and onset of childbearing, increasing contraceptive use for spacing of pregnancies, and generating the most positive impact on contraceptive use among the socioeconomically least advantaged. The model was developed and tested in rural Bihar, India.

Visit http://www.pathfind.org/site/DocServer/PRACHAR_Impact_-_Pathfinder_WP_Jan_2010.pdf?docID=18181 to see the report on the impact of implementing the model in the reproductive health and family planning programs in Bihar and Uttar Pradesh.  

The Triple Crises of Civilization.

Rev. David Murphy and George Plumb urge you, in order to face the triple crises of Global Warming, Peak Oil, and exceeding our Carrying Capacity while adding eighty million annually to our population, to read at least one book from each of the following categories:

• Peak Oil

• The Long Emergency: Surviving the Converging Catastrophes of the Twenty-First Century, James Howard Kunstler, Atlantic Monthly Press, 20051
• Peak Everything: Waking Up to the Century of Declines, Richard Heinberg, New Society Publishers, 20071
• Confronting Collapse: The Crisis of Energy and Money in a Post-Peak Oil World, Michael Rupert, Chelsea Green Press, 20092
• Transition Handbook, Rob Hopkins, Chelsea Green Press, 2009

• Climate Change

• Storms of my Grandchildren, James Hansen, Bloombury USA, 20091
• Our Choice: A Plan to Solve the Climate Crisis, Al Gore, Rodale Press, 20091
• Earth, Bill McKibben, Times Books, 20101
• Plan B 4.0: Mobilizing to Save Civilization, Lester Brown, W.W. Norton Co., 20091

• Population Size and Growth

• A Pivotal Moment: Population, Justice and the Environmental Challenge, Laurie Mazur, Island Press, 20101 Growing Pains: A Planet in Distress, Valorie M. Allen, IUniverse Press, 20101
• The Population: Fix-Breaking America's Addiction to Population Growth, Edward Hartman, out of print but available through used sources at www.populationfix.com, 20061
• More: Population, Nature and What Women Want, Robert Engelman, Island Press, 20081

• Combined Crisis

• The Bridge at the Edge of the World: Capitalism, the Environment, and Crossing from Crisi to Sustainability, Gus Speth, Yale University Press, 20081
• Threshold: The Crisis of Western Civilization, Thom Hartmann, Viking Press, 20091
• Endgame-the problem of civilization, Derrick Jensen, Seven Stories Press, 20061
• The Vanishing Face of Gaia: The Final Warning: Enjoy it while you can, James Lovelock, Allen Lane, 20091

• Religious Point of View

• A Buddhist Response to the Climate Emergency, John Stanley, David R. Lay, and Gyurme Dorje, Wisdom Press, 2008
• Love God, Heal Earth: The Ecological Crisis through the Lens of Faith, Rev. Canon Sally G. Bingham (founder of Interfaith Power and Light), SkyLight Paths Publishing, 2009
• Claiming Earth as Common Ground, Rabbi Andrea Cohen-Kiener, St. Lynn's Press, 2009
• A Climate Change: Global Warming Facts for Faith-Based Decisions, Katherine Hayhoe and Andrew Farley, Hachette Book Group, 2009

If you only have time or motivation to read only a couple of books, then James Hansen's book, The Storms of my Grandchildren, and Michael Rupert's Confronting Collapse are must reads.  

2010 World Population Data Sheet.

Download the 2010 World Population Data Sheet from the Population Reference Bureau at http://www.prb.org/Articles/2010/worldpopulationclock2010.aspx . On the same web page, view the Population Clock the world's births and deaths by year,month, week day, hour, minute, and second, and broken down by more developed, less developed, and less developed excluding China.  

Another Pill That Could Cause a Revolution.

A little white pill costing less than $1 each is beginning to revolutionize abortion around the world, especially in poor countries. With this pill, thousands of women's lives could be saved each year.

Most (5/6) of abortions are performed in developing countries, where poor sterilization and training often make the procedure dangerous. As many as 70,000 women die annually from complications of abortions, according to the World Health Organization.

The pill, Misoprostol, accomplishes what is called a "medical abortion." While in the United States and Europe the medical abortion consists of two sets of "M" pills: mifepristone, formerly known as RU-486, and then a day or two later the misoprostol. This combination produces a miscarriage more than 95% of the time in early pregnancy. But mifepristone is difficult to obtain in much of the world, because it is used only to induce abortions.

Misoprostol, however, is widely available and can't easily be banned because it is also used for ulcers and can save lives of women with postpartum hemorrhages.

When women take misoprostol alone, abortion effectiveness drops to 80-85% - and that's far better and safer than other alternatives.

Medical abortion causes a miscarriage that is indistinguishable from a natural one. This not only saves lives by preventing botched abortions in countries where abortion is illegal or difficult to attain, but prevents arrest where a woman would seek help in a hospital after a botched abortion. One serious downside is that misoprostol is suspected of causing birth defects, perhaps 1% of the time, but only if it fails and the pregnancy continues to term.

In the United States, only about one-eighth of abortion are done with pills, mostly because mifepristone must be taken in a clinic. But worldwide, the number of medical abortions is surging, accounting for nearly 70% of all abortions in Scotland, according to Marie Stopes International.

In some form and strength, medical abortion seems to work "from Day 1 to the end of pregnancy," — but the effectiveness and safety of later-stage abortions still need to be worked out.

In the United States, the pills can be taken up to nine weeks' gestation. In Britain, inpatient use of the pills is permitted up to 24 weeks.

For those who are not against abortion, taking pills at home may seem a more natural process than a surgical abortion, resulting in more acceptance.

Misoprostol on its own can be found all over the world, from Internet sites to over-the-counter pharmacies in Delhi. In India, misoprostol costs just pennies per pill.

Last year the World Health Organization expanded the use of misoprostol as an “essential medicine" to include treatment of miscarriages and incomplete abortions.  

New Index Highlights Most Overpopulated Countries.

The most overpopulated state is Singapore, followed by Israel and Kuwait, according The Overpopulation Index, published today by the Optimum Population Trust, ranking countries by their degree of overpopulation.

In the Index, 130 countries are ranked according to the sustainability of their populations - the extent to which they are living within their environmental means. 77 of them are considered overpopulated - they are consuming more resources than they are producing and are dependent on other countries, and ultimately the Earth as a whole, to make good the difference.

The Middle East and Europe are the most overpopulated regions. China and India, despite having the highest populations, rank lower, at 29th and 33rd respectively. The world as a whole, meanwhile, is overpopulated by two billion - the difference between its actual population and the number it can support sustainably, given current lifestyles and technologies.

The Index is calculated using ecological footprinting, which measures the area of biologically productive land and water required to produce the resources and absorb the waste of a given population and expresses this in global hectares - hectares with world-average biological productivity. The Ecological Footprint Atlas, using figures from 2006, was used for this Index.

As an example, a UK citizen has a per capita ecological footprint of 6.12 global hectares but because of the size of the population, their "share" of national biocapacity is less, at only 1.58 global hectares. Thus the U.K. has a self-sufficiency rating of 25.8% - the proportion of its footprint it derives from its own resources - and a corresponding dependency rating of 74.2%. If it had to rely on its own biocapacity, the UK could sustain only a quarter of its population - around 15 million - and at current consumption levels is "overpopulated" by more than 45 million.

Sub-Saharan Africa, by contrast, is notable by its relative absence from the index. The population of Africa as a whole is currently living within its limits, with a self-sufficiency rating of 107%.

"Overpopulation" is questionable word, but we believe the index helps to anchor it firmly in the realm of sustainability - of people living within the limits of the place they inhabit. The index also clarifies what we really mean by sustainability and how important human numbers are to the concept.

The index only covers countries where footprint exceeds biocapacity. Here is a list of countries which currently have a self-sufficiency rating of 100% or more"

Somalia (105.2%), Cambodia (105.5%), Africa (106.3%), Panama (107.1%), Senegal (109.4%), Gambia (109.4%), Botswana (110.1%), Lithuania (110.2%), Venezuela- Bolivarian Republic of (113.7%), Niger (114.2%), Kyrgyzstan (118.1%), Ecuador (121.2%), Sudan (126.4%), Sierra Leone (129.4%), Chile (132.1%), Lao People's Democratic Republic (132.9%), Mali (136.8%), Estonia (140.1%), Russian Federation (142.5%), Nicaragua (145.3%), Norway (145.4%), Latvia (157.3%), New Zealand (159.0%), Myanmar (160.7%), Côte d'Ivoire (174.8%), Cameroon (185.1%), Solomon Islands (185.3%), Chad (192.3%), Guinea (200.6%), Mauritania (203.0%), Colombia (206.5%), Papua New Guinea (219.1%), Oceania (220.9%), Latin America and the Caribbean (222.8%), Liberia (224.8%), Eritrea (225.9%), Peru (226.9%), Argentina (234.9%), Finland (235.7%), Zambia (244.6%), Madagascar (270.9%), Namibia (290.4%), Canada (296.6%), Paraguay (321.8%), Guinea-Bissau (335.4%), Angola (355.1%), Congo- Democratic Republic of (361.6%), Central African Republic (585.7%), Bolivia (803.9%), Congo (1372.7%)  

Karen Gaia says: I think the numbers may have changed a lot in the four years since 2006, now that China and other more affluent countries are making crop land grabs in poorer countries like Sudan and Ethiopia.

U.S.: Working Group Advocates for Over-the-Counter Access to Birth Control Pill.

The Oral Contraceptive Over-the-Counter Working Group, a coalition of women's health experts, aims to gain FDA approval to market an oral contraceptive for nonprescription use, citing evidence that nonprescription access does not compromise safety.

The group, funded by the Hewlett Foundation, believes prescription-only access to birth control patronizes women, restricts contraceptive freedom and does little to curb teen pregnancy rates. There are barriers that have to do with the logistics of insurance, or the policy at the doctor's office.

The group, focusing on the so-called "mini-pill," hopes to have the pill on the market within five years. The mini-pill has a lower risk of adverse effects than other hormonal methods, and typically is prescribed to women who are lactating or have a higher risk of complications, such as stroke and heart attack, because they smoke or are older than age 35. It contains the same synthetic hormone -- progestin -- that is used in the OTC emergency contraceptives Plan B and Next Choice.

Teens find it is difficult to visit a doctor's office without a parent's help. Nearly 20% of sexually active teens who do not want to become pregnant are not using contraceptives, according to the Guttmacher Institute. A 2006 study published in Contraception found that 68% of surveyed women said they wanted a birth control pill that was available without a prescription, with uninsured women showing a high level of interest.

Until recently providers followed guidelines to perform a pelvic exam and Pap test at every family planning visit, but new guidelines suggest that most women need less frequent screening.

"Holding birth control hostage until women have had a pelvic exam is a paternalistic attitude to women's health." The two aren't linked.

One concern is that moving to OTC status could cause the pill's cost to jump, which is what happened when EC became available without a prescription, however, supporters are investigating strategies to keep costs down.  

Slavery in Haiti.

As an example, a former child slave sent four of her five children into slavery because she feared they would die of hunger in her home.

There are an estimated 27 million slaves in the world, according to Free the Slaves. This is more than at any time in history, even including during the trans-Atlantic slave trade.

In Haiti, the only nation ever to host a successful slave revolution, 225,000 to 300,000 children live in servitude in a system known as restavèk. The numbers may rise dramatically due to the hundreds of thousands of children who lost their parents or were abandoned after the earthquake. In addition to likely trauma, hunger and health problems, these children usually do unpaid labor. Unprotected girls are also at risk of what amounts to sex slavery.

Parents, usually from the countryside, where poverty is unrelenting, give up their child to a better-off relative, neighbor or stranger who promises to provide care and schooling. The children are as young as three, with girls between six and 14 years old comprising 65%.

Restavèk children toil long hours and rarely go to school. They are regularly abused. They usually eat table scraps or have to scavenge in the streets for their own food, sleep on the floor and wear cast-off rags.

The children usually stay because of the threat of severe punishment if they are caught trying to escape. Another reason is that they have no other source of food and shelter. Survival and safety options for street children in Haiti are not good.

The system has long been widely socially accepted, but efforts are underway to change this.  

Egypt Plagued with Street Children.

Egypt's 90,000 to 1 million street children find themselves on the street, usually when mother or father have no money to pay the rent or mom has to turn to prostitution.

Egypt in 2003 adopted a new national strategy for the protection and rehabilitation of street children, which tasked the National Council for Childhood and Motherhood (NCCM) with coordinating the efforts of NGOs and relevant governmental organizations. But the national strategy has yet to become operational in the form of an action plan.

Some say the number of births in Egypt is increasing because of illegal marriages, involving underage girls, which in turn fueled the existence of street children and child labor, adding to a national population growing by 1.5 million every year. But another said: "We don't have early marriage in Egypt because the age has risen. Many don't marry until their 30s because of the economic circumstances."

The minister said fighting school dropouts was one of the most effective ways to deal with the problem.

"If you don't eliminate poverty, you will always have street children," another said. “No number of governmental agencies and NGOs will be able to look out for this number of children."

“If you talk about one million street children in Egypt, who will marry and have children, they will send them to the streets with completely different norms and values to the society," Tibe explained. “It will cause a conflict in society itself, because the rehabilitation institution does not develop alternatives for these children to become respected people in the community. There is no way but crime."

Save the Children in Egypt said that in the past, thousands of such children were arrested, by virtue of being on the street alone, and were sent to detention centers without appropriate protection. But now the police sometimes demand money from the homeless children who are lucky enough to earn some money and even save some of it.

A UNICEF spokesman for the MENA region told said the factors include "poverty, rural migration, bad housing, school dropout, violence against children and others. Children living in the street are affected by a combination of mutually reinforcing protection risks such as child labor, trafficking, conflict with the law and abuse."

A government survey in 2009 suggested that 42% of street children in Egypt are school dropouts, and 30% had never attended school at all. Many are ignorant about health, hygiene, and nutrition and deprived of services. As children living on the fringe subsist on an inadequate diet, they are often malnourished and most of them are illiterate.

“The phenomenon is, by its nature, extremely difficult to measure," he explained, “as classical information gathering exercises such as households surveys, are not designed to capture their situation. Moreover, being in the street is a status offence for children in several countries in the region."  

Karen Gaia says: there are only 80.5 million people in Egypt. 1 million street kids is an amazingly high proportion!

The Emerging Politics of Food Scarcity.

Growing world food insecurity is ushering in a new geopolitics of food scarcity, one where competition for land and water is crossing national boundaries. The risk is that this will increase hunger and political instability, which could lead to even more failing states.

Individual countries, acting in their own self-interest, are taking measures to secure future food supplies - measures that often result in harm to the less affluent countries.

In late 2007 wheat-exporting countries like Russia and Argentina, attempted to counter domestic food price rises by limiting or banning exports. Viet Nam and several other minor exporters banned or restricted rice exports. These moves created panic in the scores of countries that import grain.

World market prices for grain and soybeans were tripling at the time, and governments in food-importing countries suddenly realized that they could no longer rely on the market for supplies. Some countries tried to nail down long-term bilateral trade agreements that would lock up future grain supplies. The Philippines negotiated a deal with Viet Nam for 1.5 million tons of rice for 3 years. Yemen, which now imports most of its wheat, hopes to negotiate a long-term wheat import deal with Australia. Egypt has reached a long-term agreement with Russia for more than 3 million tons of wheat each year. But in a seller's market, many of the others were not successful in securing wheat.

As food supplies tighten, the more affluent food-importing countries seek to buy or lease large blocks of land to farm in other countries. Libya, importing 90% of its grain, has found 100,000 hectares of land in the Ukraine to grow wheat for its own people.

In some cases, government-owned corporations are acquiring the land. In others, private entities are the buyers, with the government of the investing country using its diplomatic resources to achieve an agreement favorable to the investors. Countries where populations have outrun their own land and water resources are doing the buying, including Saudi Arabia, South Korea, China, Kuwait, Libya, India, Egypt, Jordan, the United Arab Emirates, and Qatar. Saudi Arabia is looking to buy or lease land in at least 11 countries, including Ethiopia, Turkey, Ukraine, Sudan, Kazakhstan, the Philippines, Viet Nam, and Brazil.

Countries selling or leasing their land are often low-income countries where chronic hunger and malnutrition are commonplace. Some depend on the World Food Programme (WFP) for part of their food supply. Saudia Arabia is receiving rice produced on land they had acquired in Ethiopia, where the WFP is working to feed some 5 million people. The Saudis and several other grain importing countries are also receiving grain from Sudan—ironically the site of the WFP's largest famine relief effort.

China has secured rights to 2.8 million hectares in the Democratic Republic of the Congo to produce palm oil, which can be used either for cooking or to produce biodiesel fuel, which competes with food. Compare this to the Congo's 1.9 million hectares used by 66 million people to produce corn, their food staple. The Congo also depends on a WFP lifeline. China has also acquired land or has plans to do so are Australia, Russia, Brazil, Kazakhstan, and Myanmar.

South Korea also plans to grow crops in Sudan -690,000 hectares for growing wheat. This land acquisition is nearly 75% the size of the area South Korea now uses at home to produce rice, its staple food. The Koreans are also looking at the Russian Far East, where they plan to grow corn and soybeans.

These land acquisitions are also acquisitions for the water that falls on or runs through the land in the host country. Land acquisitions in the Sudan that tap water from the Nile, which is already fully utilized, may mean that Egypt will get less water from the river—making it even more dependent on imported grain.

Many stakeholders, such as farmers, are not at the table when the agreements are negotiated, they often do not even learn about the deals until after they have been signed. Many local farmers may simply be displaced.

When the news that China signed leased over a million hectares of crop land from the Philippine government leaked out, the public outcry—much of it from Filipino farmers—forced the government to suspend the agreement. A similar situation developed in Madagascar, where South Korea pursued rights to more than 1 million hectares of land, an area half the size of Belgium. This helped stoke the political furor that led to a change in government and cancellation of the agreement. China is also running into on-the-ground opposition over its quest for 2 million hectares in Zambia.

China and South Korea are planning in some cases to bring in their own farm workers. Is the introduction of large-scale commercial, heavily mechanized farming operations what is needed by the recipient countries, where unemployment is widespread?

The government of Pakistan, which is trying to sell or lease 400,000 hectares, is offering to provide a security force of 100,000 men to protect the land and assets of investors.

In countries like Indonesia, Brazil, and the Democratic Republic of the Congo, expanding cropland typically means clearing tropical rainforests that sequester large quantities of carbon. This could measurably raise global carbon emissions, increasing the climate threat to world food security.

The World Bank, the International Fund for Agricultural Development, the U.N. Food and Agriculture Organization, and the U.N. Conference on Trade and Development have drafted a set of recommended principles for responsible investment in agriculture. This will likely evolve as these agreements move forward.  

U.S.: Justice Ginsburg Says Roe Will Be Upheld, Applauds Kagan.

Supreme Court Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg predicted that the U.S. "will never go back to the way it once was" before Roe v. Wade. She also said that current legal challenges do not completely eliminate abortion rights.

Abortion restrictions hurt poor women - "If people realize that, maybe they will have a different attitude." Since Roe, "over a generation of young women have grown up, understanding they can control their own reproductive capacity, and in fact their life's destiny."

Ginsburg first met Supreme Court nominee Elena Kagan during a federal clerkship Kagan held and later "grew to know" her during Ginsburg's Supreme Court confirmation hearings in 1993. She praised Kagan's performance during her Senate Judiciary Committee confirmation hearings.  

Save the Children: Policy Brief on Population.

Population's rapid growth receives too little political and public attention. At only 2.5 billion in 1950, it is now at 6.8 billion, and is predicted to stabilise between 7.8 and 11.7 billion around 2050 (median 9.1 billion). Because of the high impacts, it is important to stabilize at the lowest level possible.

Rapid population growth in the world's poorest countries is a major obstacle to poverty reduction. Rapid population growth rates and high fertility rates correlate closely with high rates of maternal and child mortality, and most of the countries that are furthest from achieving the Millennium Development Goals have high rates of population growth.

Success at reducing fertility rates does not require coersion. The forced sterilisation policies pursued by India and China in the 1970s were an outrageous violation of women's rights. In International Conference on Population and Development (ICPD) in 1994 concluded that strengthening women's sexual and reproductive rights and social status; improving maternal and child health, nutrition and education; and increasing access to and the use of modern family planning, would work the best, empowering women tend to choose to have fewer children and to space their pregnancies. This has positive effects on the health of mothers and children alike and on the development prospects of poor communities and countries.

While total fertility rates have fallen across the developing world from an average of 5.6 children per woman in 1970 to 2.4 in 2005, almost all of the 50 least developed countries have much higher rates, in most cases more than five children per woman. By 2050, Uganda is expected to grow from 27 to 130 million; Niger from 14 to 50 million; Iraq from 29 to 64 million; and Afghanistan from 31 to 82 million. Jeffrey Sachs noted: "not only will the world's population continue to soar in the medium and high forecasts, but it will soar in precisely those parts of the world that are struggling the most today with extreme poverty, disease, famine and violence."

The Millennium Development Goals (MGD), agreed in 2001, made no reference to population growth, and the 2005 Commission for Africa report said almost nothing on the subject, despite the fact that there is overwhelming evidence of the damaging impact that rapid population growth has on poverty reduction efforts.

MDG 1 called for halving, by 2015, of the proportion of people living on less than US$1 a day. But the number of Africans living in poverty has increased by more than 100 million between 1990 and 2005 - partly as a result of population growth. In much of Africa rising populations have diminished the poverty-reducing effect of economic growth. MGD 1 part 2 calls for a halving of the proportion of people who are hungry. The slow pace of the decline in malnutrition is far too slow to achieve the goal, and the trend looks set to be reversed by food price rises and the economic downturn.

Where women lack rights, where they lack the status or the power to insist that their partners use contraception, or where modern family planning is simply not available, closely-spaced children and high fertility rates are very common. Children born less than two years after the next oldest sibling are more than twice as likely to die as a child who is born following a three-year gap.

High fertility strongly increases a woman's lifetime risk of dying from pregnancy-related causes. 210 million women each year suffer life-threatening complications and a further 536,000 die in pregnancy, during childbirth or in the six weeks following delivery. Of these, 67,000 maternal deaths result from unsafe abortions, carried out in unhygienic conditions and/or by unskilled providers. Many of these deaths could be avoided if women had access to modern family planning and, most importantly, felt sufficiently empowered to insist on its use.

380 women become pregnant each minute; half of these do not wish for or plan their pregnancy. When women have rights and the use of family planning maternal and child deaths are drastically reduced, simply by preventing unplanned babies from being born. 125 million women worldwide would like to control their fertility, but are either not using or unable to insist on using, modern contraception.

About 14 million girls aged 15-19 give birth each year, many lacking the social status or power to control their fertility. Many are forced into an early marriage. Sub-Saharan Africa and South Asia, especially amongst the poorest social groups, see the highest rates of adolescent fertility. Girls aged 15-19 from the poorest groups are three times more likely than their better-off peers to give birth in adolescence, and bear twice as many children during their lifetime. They are also 2-5 times as likely to die from pregnancy-related complications as women in their 20s, and their babies are less likely to survive as well.

Population growth can increase the risks of political instability and conflict, due to poverty, rapid urbanisation, reduced supplies of farmland and water per capita, and pressures on already overstretched infrastructure and services.

The responsibility for the current climate crisis rests squarely with developed countries, whose consumption patterns are pushing the world's fragile eco-system beyond its limits, inflicting huge global costs - not least on the world's poor. But the necessary global transition to a low-carbon, less resource-intensive, less polluting economic future will not be infinitely harder to achieve in a world of 10 billion rather than 6.8 billion people.

The link between population growth and poverty is two-way: poverty often leads to higher fertility and population growth, while high fertility and high population rates can entrench poverty. The key is to replace this vicious circle with a virtuous one, where women's rights, and their capacity to exercise choice, alongside access to better healthcare and nutrition, and modern family planning, allow the poorest women to make informed decisions about family spacing and size. When they are able to do so, they consistently make choices that are good for their health and that of their children.

In developing countries where the birth rate has fallen, between 25 and 40% of economic growth is attributed to the demographic change. This dividend includes the benefits of improved health and nutrition (healthy and well nourished people are more productive) and the freeing up of resources for investment in education and skills.

Save the Children calls for donors, international development agencies and developing country governments to make a commitment to the rights of women and girls, and to tackling a range of structural inequities that prevent the realisation of these rights, and to improve access to and use of family planning.

A new target was added to the MDGs, calling for universal access to reproductive healthcare by 2015. On current trends, this target will not be met - in fact, national and donor resources for family planning have fallen since the mid-1990s. This must change: investment in these services must become a high priority for development spending. Comprehensive family planning services should also include the right to safe abortion and the necessary services to ensure this.