Health services are too far away, of poor quality, or unaffordable. Women often lack the power to make decisions about their own health care and adolescent girls often do not know how to seek care and cannot afford it. In some cases, families may simply decide that a mothers' life is not worth the cost or time needed to save it. Along with maternal death and illness, women and adolescent girls face a host of other reproductive health problems, all of which affect the lives of their children. For instance, between 120 and 150 million women would like to delay or prevent future pregnancies, but lack access to family planning services.
Family planning helps save lives by preventing unwanted pregnancy and allowing births to be spaced.
These services also help prevent high risk pregnancies, such as those to women younger than 18 or older than 45, or to mothers who already have four or more children. Family planning also saves children's lives. Studies show that children born less than two years after a sibling are twice as likely to die as infants born at least two years apart. Mothers may pass STDs, including HIV, to their children in the womb, and HIV can be transmitted to infants through breastfeeding. Women often cannot protect themselves from STDs because they lack the power, information, or resources to decide on or negotiate matters of sex, including condom use.