Well, I work in the field of public health with a specialty in family planning and reproductive health and I did! The one thing that is at the top of my mind today, on World Contraception Day, is the misconceptions around contraception.
Family planning is simply providing a couple with the tools (contraception) to choose when and how often to bear children.
You may have heard the terms 'family planning' often lumped together with 'abortion'. It is a complicated topic - often plagued with inability to find common ground, and might I add, misguided passion. I realize that in order to have dialog, one must respect and acknowledge the differing views and values that result in different definitions of abortion.
Definitions and language are important. The simple question of what constitutes a pregnancy needs to be defined. Even as an university-educated student, I thought that life was formed at fertilization (when an egg and sperm come together). However, I learnt that, medically, a pregnancy is defined when the fertilized zygote undergoes implantation. In fact, 1/3 of fertilized zygotes will not implant, and will be 'aborted' naturally by the body.
This difference in definition is important when classifying and defining those things that can cause termination of said-pregnancy (i.e. abortaficients). While the average Joe (or Jane!) does not seek to understand the mechanisms of action of the different forms of contraception, misconceptions need to be dispelled.
As someone that values life - I want to see a global reduction in abortions. From an economic standpoint, abortions are expensive! Women who don't have access to contraception will find themselves pregnant and will seek abortions, especially if the pregnancy is unplanned. Botched abortions (especially, in places where access to health-care is limited) can result in death or disability of the mother. These costs to society are expensive - children grow up without their mothers, families suffer loss of income and incur out of pocket costs for medical care, not to mention mental/psychological trauma that a woman goes through when undergoing an abortion, etc..etc.
Family planning is one of the single best ways to reduce abortions!
Think about it: if you provide a woman the tools to prevent pregnancy, then you will reduce the need for said-woman to seek an abortion!
The reality is that many women, especially in the Global South, do not have access to simple things like condoms, birth-control pills, or injectable contraceptives. If access is there, then it is patchy at best. And even if access is 100% guaranteed, it is not guaranteed that a woman has the ability to make that choice to use contraception. In a male-dominated world, women simply not have the same ability to negotiate sex.
As a Christian public health professional, I value life. Life of women. Life of children. Life of families. I want to see women, regardless of where they live, and how much money they make or don't make, receive access to and education about a wide range of quality contraception.
So today, on World Contraception Day, while an estimated 215 million women worldwide want to avoid pregnancy and plan their families but are not using modern contraception, it is my hope that this post caused at least one person to pause and think.
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