family planning initiatives

Dear colleague,

This is to introduce my new book, “Children by Choice? Double standards, population and the planet”. Following a previous book, “The Domestication of Women” I have been working on this topic for some years, as an independent researcher and author. When I started I saw this as an unfinished but critical element in women’s lives and thought the solutions to unplanned pregnancies and human population growth were obvious and simple. No, it is a minefield. As Oscar Wilde wrote: “The truth is rarely pure, and never simple”.

I have examined the pro-natalist movements, often connected to fundamentalism, sectarianism and nationalism – and particularly the still little-known secular role of the Vatican, and its use of an anomalous position inside the United Nations, which has no legal basis, to block initiatives for reproductive health – even opposing advances in women’s rights on the basis that they might imply reproductive rights. I am suggesting that the emphasis on reproductive “rights”, or SRHR, plays into this blocking tactic and an emphasis on women’s needs would be harder for them and their small group of national delegations to oppose. I also suggest that a resolution of the UN General Assembly would be the best initiative, since it would instruct the WHO, UNICEF and all other UN agencies to offer family planning as part of their programmes.

I have a number of other proposals for ways forward on this, ranging from a new calculation of GDP to focusing on basic health services (rather than girls’ education) as the key to helping women and men to decide on the right family size for them. I suggest support for national governments to take back health services from religious bodies which refuse to offer family planning.

The book is available on Amazon Books in all countries, as a paperback or e-book, and I would be delighted if you would decide to take a look (and ideally put a review on Amazon). If you are able to review it in your own outlet please let me know and I will send you a review copy.

Just go to Amazon Books and search for “Children by Choice Rogers” Here is the link for the US (it works from Russia too)

Thank you for reading.

Best wishes

• Barbara Rogers