A Matter of Life and Death

Barbara Rogers argues that population growth would not be a problem if all women had access to safe and effective contraception. If half the world's women have one less child our numbers would stabilise. The women's movement and environmentalists should take this up as a priority, allowing poor women the same access to reproductive choice as richer ones take for granted. Modern eugenics, developed by Nazi racial theorists, is now rife among fundamentalists, racists an nationalists. It aims to suppress women's ability to choose when to get pregnant, crudely aimed at forcing us to "breed". About 40% of pregnancies worldwide are unintended, and about half of these are ended by abortion, most of which are dangerous. The best way to reduce abortions is through good contraception. The book examines the strange origins of the Catholic Church's ban on choice. It has failed to convince most to its own members and has resorted to pressurising governments and infiltrating the United Nations and international conferences. The United States under Donald Trump has slashed funding for reproductive health and imposed a "global gag". This can and must be challenged internationally. Family planning organisations must also rethink their strategy and focus on women's need to decide for themselves for themselves how many children to have, and when. All international bodies and national governments have a crucial role to play; this book explains how.