FAMILY PLANNING 2020
Hope has many faces. It is the face of a woman in Tanzania who has borne seven children and finally, for the first time in her life, has access to modern contraception. It is the face of an Ethiopian teenager, married off as a child, who decides to postpone her second baby until she can finish school herself. It is the face of a farmer in Ghana who wishes for only as many children as her small plot of land can support. It is the face of a new bride in Pakistan who plans and saves for the future, confident that she will not get pregnant before she and her husband are ready to start a family.
Family planning is about hope. It is about health, for oneself and one’s children. And it is fundamental to ensuring and protecting reproductive rights.
At the 2012 London Summit on Family Planning, leaders from around the world gathered to renew their commitment to that right. Governments, NGOs, multilaterals, civil society and the private sector all converged on the idea that it was time—past time—to put women’s reproductive health front and center on the global agenda. They recognized that family planning is both a basic right and a transformative intervention: that it is the key that unlocks our ability to reach our development goals.
