Six Billion Reasons to Celebrate
Frank Furedi
Author of Population and Development: A Critical Introduction
The proponents of population policies routinely point to maternal mortality rates as evidence of the need for “better reproductive health care,” which is usually a euphemism for better birth control. The figures are indeed horrific — 580,000 deaths per year are linked to pregnancy and childbirth. But if maternal mortality is the fundamental concern then the emphasis should be on improving hospital services and prenatal clinics, not simply on preventing pregnancies in the first place.
The lobbyists’ linguistic acrobatics are most disturbing when they talk of “choice” and “rights” for women. This cynical rhetoric should seem offensive to anyone committed to the right of self determination. In their enthusiasm for controlling fertility, the U.N. and the lobbyists are not interested in offering “choice” in the abstract. Rather, population control programs aim, through education and other indirect means, to coerce and to change attitudes. These dialogues are not meant to be between equals, but are conducted as if between a parent and a child. Unfpa is driven by the patronizing assumption that it knows best and its report assumes that it has the right to alter the most intimate aspects of people’s lives.