Currently an estimated 600,000 women die annually from pregnancy-related causes. Family planning can help reduce both abortions and deaths from unsafe abortion. The recent experience of Russia and several Eastern European countries provides evidence that increased use of family planning helps reduce reliance on abortion. As a result of abortions performed under unsafe conditions, more than 75,000 women die annually, roughly one of every seven pregnancy-related deaths. At the International Conference on Population and Development in 1994, more than 150 countries agreed that unsafe abortion was a major public health problem.
Family planning supports U.S. goals.
It supports overall good health, an important consequence in an era of diseases that know no borders. The dramatic increase in contraceptive use since the mid-1960s is also a key factor in the slowing of population growth. Slower growth means more time for governments to make the necessary investments in human development through education and health care, and may allow governments to spend more per person on these and other vital social services. This can pave the way for the kind of economic growth that turns aid recipients into trading partners, as has been the case with South Korea, Taiwan, and Thailand. Slower population growth can help alleviate environmental stress.