Friday, September 04, 2009

More Funding Needed for Women's Health

Betts Webster
09-04-09
12:37

More than 300 officials from various NGO's around the world met in Berlin, Germany to discuss women's health in developing countries. The meeting is being used to assess the progress in the fight for sexual and reproductive rights for women, the goals for which were set 15 years ago at a similar meeting in Cairo, Egypt. A conference organizer said that the pace has been slow on many issues over the last few years, due to funding issues. A 1994 conference gave rise to a plan adopted by 179 countries to increase funding and support for a woman's right to education, health care, and reproductive choices. During the Bush administration, however, funding from the U.S. was cut back by $34 million because, they claimed, the fund promoted abortion. Scott Radloff of the U.S. Agency for International Development says now, the U.S. will increase support in hopes of not only improving family planning services and S.T.D. prevention but also bringing many families and communities out of poverty.
In my opinion, improving women's health and widening the availability of reproductive education and contraception would solve or at least put a dent in many of the worlds issues. Most importantly it would improve the lives of women and, in a trickle-down effect, their families and communities. Among the benefits of increased sexual education: decrease in S.T.D.s like AIDS, decreased population growth, decreased infant and childbirth mortality. In many developing nations, in fact around the world, women are the center of the family in the home, and healthier mothers means healthier children. This is not a globally funded abortion campaign, instead I see it as an attempt to drop abortion rates; if women can keep from getting pregnant, then abortion rates will drop. I'm glad to see that this is a global discussion again and also that the U.S. has redoubled it's efforts in the fight for women's rights.

http://www.google.com/hostednews/ap/article/ALeqM5hb5T4iZdH-11qaUvKq4LuLv5Q7HQD9AGHPVO1

1 comment:

Brate said...

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