The more women who plan their families and intend their pregnancies, the less demand there is for abortion services. Sierra Club supports women's empowerment and access to voluntary family planning services to give women a choice about how many children they will have and when they will have them. Since most women given a choice will decide to have smaller families, a benefit of women's empowerment and access to family planning is population stabilization. The Population Program's work is about offering women the ability to make educated choices, not telling them what to do with their bodies. Our work is not about controlling women's lives.
Family planning encompases a much more comprehensive range of options for women.
At Sierra Club, we believe that by protecting women's health and promoting women's empowerment, we can protect the earth's health and the global environment. The growing population and its consumption patterns have profound consequences for the global environment, including species extinction, deforestation, desertification, climate change, and the destruction of natural ecosystems. These global environmental impacts pose a significant threat to the earth's sustainability and our quality of life. The environmental and social impacts of population growth extend beyond national borders, affecting everyone that shares the earth's natural resources. Population growth increases the demand on natural resources, and impacts the entire global environment.