World Contraception Day recognizes the importance of birth control globally. Contraception advances the health and wellbeing not just of women and girls, but of their families and communities. However, around the world, escalating inequality, tied to factors that include race, displacement, education, and income, makes accessing contraceptives more challenging for millions of people.
Each person must be guaranteed the freedom to protect their reproductive health and to plan their family. Access to birth control is foundational to bodily autonomy and to achieving one’s full potential: it helps reduce adolescent births, prevent maternal deaths, and further gender equality.
This year’s theme for World Contraception Day is: “A choice for all. Freedom to plan, power to choose.”
There is a lot of work to be done. While many countries have increased spending on contraceptives, there is a growing gap in funding for contraceptives globally – a gap that is expected to reach at least $1.5 billion in low- and middle-income countries by 2030. This shortfall could have devastating repercussions for women and girls, their families, and society as a whole.
Currently, nearly 257 million women worldwide (most of whom live in low-income and middle-income countries) have an unmet need for modern birth control. This increases their risk of exposure to sexually transmitted infections such as HIV, as well as unintended pregnancy, unsafe abortion, and preventable maternal death.
We cannot allow women to die due to a lack of access to contraception. We must provide them with what they need to stay safe and to defend their sexual and reproductive health, including in times of crisis and displacement, when their vulnerabilities are heightened.
It can make a profound difference: Research suggests that meeting the unmet need for contraception could avert more than half of maternal deaths by reducing higher-risk pregnancies, increasing the spacing between births, and decreasing the likelihood of unsafe abortions.
“Healthy families are created by choice, not by chance,” the late Dr. Nafis Sadik, former UNFPA executive director, said at the International Conference on Population and Development in Cairo, Egypt about 30 years ago. At that landmark event, world leaders affirmed the Programme of Action that recognized reproductive health and rights – including voluntary family planning – as foundational to development.
We must increase investment in contraception so that each individual has the freedom to plan their own future. The world’s peace and prosperity depend on it.
Learn more from the United Nations Population Fund.