Family planning is dressed up as a way of safeguarding people's health in the third world. Family planning projects abroad are motivated as a means to improve standards of healthcare, to educate women about sexual health and to give women as much control over their lives as possible. Simply scratch the surface of today's feminist-speak arguments for family planning in the third world, and straight away the old motivation of population control begins to reappear. Health projects, we are told, now concentrate on the area of reproductive and maternal health and contraception services, because it is the most effective way to save the lives of third world women. It is estimated that every year half a million women die from causes associated with childbearing.
Unsafe abortion is a frequent killer.
Each of these deaths is, of course, a tragedy, but it is interesting that the proposed solution in Burundi is so different to the one put forward over here. If a woman dies during childbirth in the UK, the call goes out for improved maternity care, better hospitals and more midwives and doctors. When the same thing happens in Burundi, however, the demand from Western agencies is for ways to prevent women becoming pregnant in the first place. Doubtless if fewer Burundi women get pregnant, fewer will die. But fewer pregnant women would die if the conditions in which they gave birth were improved.