IP News

 

 

To Order a copy of the Book
Contact:
LudyBugPress
16964 Columbia River Dr.
Sonora, CA 95370-9111
www.Ladybugbooks.com
17.99 Plus tax, S&H

Jane Robert's Page

Jane Roberts was named one of the 50 Women of the Year by MS Magazine and one of the 21 Leaders of the 21st Century by WOMEN's E News for starting the 34 Million Friends campaign.

---

Audubon has GOOD NEWS
on funding for international family planning !!

Last Friday, the Foreign Operations Appropriations Subcommittee in the
House of Representatives appropriated $432 million for bilateral U.S.
international family planning programs- The Subcommittee decided not to
adhere to the President's 18% CUT in funding ($357 million for FY07) -
the lowest request yet for these programs. The Subcommittee also
allocated $34 million for the United Nations Population Fund (UNFPA).

While $432 million is the same amount allocated by the subcommittee last
year, this level funding reflects the support of Congressional members
for these important programs. Funding these programs is critical for
improving the health of people and the planet. For the last 4 years, the
President asked Congress to fund U.S. international family planning at
$425 million dollars. For 3 of those years, that request was granted,
but last year, the House appropriated the higher level of $432 million.

We still need your help! The full Appropriations committee will review
this Appropriations bill next week, and then to the floor of the full
House for consideration. Please let your Member in the House know that
you support these critical programs

Pressure on the global environment and all species stems largely from
expanding human population and increasing resource consumption. Half of
all migratory songbird species in the U.S. are in decline, due in part
to human population growth and activities that cause significant loss of
habitat along migratory routes in the U.S., Latin America and the
Caribbean. Family planning helps preserve vital natural resources by
slowing rapid population growth through increasing access to education
and basic healthcare.

So, if you have a moment, please contact your House member and ask them
to support upcoming appropriations for international family planning
programs. We like to hear from you so please let us know if you have
contacted your Member of Congress! For those of you whose Member of the
House is on the APPROPRIATIONS COMMITTEE (see list below) please call
them and ask them to:

1. support international family planning programs to help
improve the quality of life for people and wildlife around the world and
reduce pressure on our shared global resources.

2. Please to support at least $432 million for funding of
international family planning at the full Committee Foreign Operations
Appropriations mark-up.

THANK YOU FOR YOUR TIME AND SUPPORT ON THESE IMPORTANT ISSUES!

 

The President's Budget for 2007 and International Family Planning:
The Numbers & What They Mean

Though many of you have already heard about the terribly low budget numbers requested by the President for U.S. international family planning (IFP) programs, here is a numerical breakdown of those numbers. As the budget formation process is soon coming to a close, we hope that you will let your federal lawmakers know that you support voluntary international family planning programs and want them to receive funding levels at least as high as last year (FY06).

President Bush's budget request for Fiscal Year 2007 calls for deep cuts in crucial international family planning programs, which could threaten the health of families and the environment worldwide. The President's budget reflects a 33% reduction for international family planning funding from what Congress appropriated for the 2006 budget.

Funding for U.S. international family planning programs fall in different areas of the budget - under the Child Survival and Health Programs (CSH) and others. For FY07, the President proposed international family planning funding within the CSH account at $294 million-a $77 million reduction from the amount appropriated by Congress last year within CSH ($371.25 million).

In its last five budget requests, the Bush administration has requested a total level of $425 million, which Congress routinely increases during the appropriations process. However, for FY07 the absence of a total figure for international family planning programs reflects a strong reluctance to acknowledge the true magnitude of the cut in the overall budget request for family planning and reproductive health.

Population pressures threaten the health of people, birds and wildlife, and the environment globally. Investing in family planning programs is a cost-effective and proven way to help ensure a healthy environment for now and generations to come.

Please let your members of Congress know that you do not agree with the President's Budget Request cuts in critical international family planning funding and that you would like to see an increase in funding above last year's levels.

International Family Planning & Reproductive Health Assistance
(in millions of dollars)

CSH CSH IFP IFP
Fiscal Year Pres. Request Cong. Enacted Pres. Request Cong. Enacted
2002 NA 368.5 425.0 446.5
2003 368.5 368.5 425.0 446.5
2004 346.0 373.3 425.0 429.5
2005 346.0 371.9 425.0 437.3
2006 346.0 371.3 425.0 435.6
2007 294.0 Pending Not specified Pending

(Analysis source: Population Action International

NOTE -- Enacted funding levels for FY 2004 and FY 2005 reflect government-wide across-the-board cuts imposed on all non-defense, non-homeland security discretionary spending totals of 0.59 percent and 0.83 percent respectively. Enacted levels for FY 2006 reflect an across-the-board cut of all discretionary spending, except veterans' health benefits and Iraq war costs, of one percent.

Sara Bushey
National Audubon Society
Public Policy Department
1150 Connecticut Avenue NW Suite 600
Washington DC 20036

The pill is mightier than the sword
- Martha Campbell, Malcolm Potts
Monday, February 27, 2006

The Bush administration intends to cut the modest funding the United States gives to international family planning by almost one-fifth. For those of us who are interested in looking 15 to 20 years ahead, this is the dumbest action possible.
The Sept. 11 commission report is explicit: "a large, steadily increasing population of young men without any reasonable expectation of suitable or steady employment [is] a sure prescription for social turbulence." Every day on TV, we can see that it is predominantly young men who join extremist groups, burn embassies and plant roadside bombs. In Iraq, Afghanistan, Pakistan or Syria, the mean age of the population is between 18 and 19; in the United States, it is over 35. Both liberal sociologists and hard-nosed CIA analysts recognize a link between a high birthrate, a high proportion of young men in the population and the possibility of violence and terrorism.
Just as smoking is a risk factor for lung cancer, so a high proportion of young men in the population compared with older men is a national risk factor for violence. Not everyone who smokes dies of cancer, but many do; not all nations with a high ratio of younger to older men spawn terrorists, but many do. Young men in a sexually conservative society who have no jobs and cannot marry are easy recruits for any extreme political or fanatical religious teaching.
Consider the case of the Black September terrorists who murdered Israeli athletes at the 1972 Munich Olympics. Even Yasser Arafat felt compelled to try to rein in this group of young fanatics, and he did so in an unusual but highly effective way. The PLO offered Black September members who married Palestinian women a flat in Beirut with a television and a refrigerator, together with $5,000 when they had their first child. Black September was never violent again.
For more than 30 years, there has been bipartisan congressional support for international family planning, and voluntary family planning has achieved a great deal. In 1960, South Korean women had six children, the population was growing more rapidly than the economy, and the country was as poor as contemporary sub-Saharan Africa. Without the support the United States gave to Korean family planning in the 1960s and 1970s, Korea might not have the two-child family and 15 times the average per-capita income of African countries it enjoys today.
It is commonly thought that poor and illiterate people want many children. Those of us who have worked in family planning for decades know this isn't true. As Korea, Thailand, Brazil and many other countries demonstrate, wherever modern methods of contraception have been made realistically available, the birth rate has fallen -- often rapidly. Where fertility remains high, careful surveys always show a significant unmet need for family planning. We have spent our professional lives in international family planning because we know family planning saves mothers' lives, and we know that in the developing world, babies born less than two years apart are more likely to die. We see abortions increasing in the Philippines where contraception is difficult to get, but decreasing in some parts of the former Soviet Union, where access to family planning is improving. Most fundamentally, no woman can be free until she can decide when to have a child.
But having said all of this, it might seem naive to suggest that family planning could help forestall the next generation of terrorists, were it not for a silent revolution occurring in the Islamic Republic of Iran. In the 1980s, Iranian economists, like their Korean counterparts 20 years earlier, saw that the population was growing faster than the economy. The Quran supports family planning, and the theocracy agreed to make all methods of contraception easily available. In 15 years, average family size plummeted from more than five children to two. A more sober, cautious population of smaller families is replacing the body of radical students. The West may not want Iran to develop nuclear weapons, but in a generation's time Iran is likely to be more stable than Pakistan, which already has the atomic bomb.
Iran had the resources to build contraceptive factories and to carry family planning into the most remote villages. The poorer countries around the world need exactly the external support that President Bush is axing. It is difficult and costly to make modern urban society invulnerable to terrorist attacks, but relatively easy and extremely low cost to help those who wish to have smaller families. For international family planning (before Bush cut it), each American gave the cost of one hamburger per year -- about $436 million total.
Prescott Bush, the president's grandfather in Connecticut, lost his first election for the Senate in 1950 because he had the courage to support Planned Parenthood. As U.S. ambassador to the United Nations, George H. W. Bush believed family planning was the key to solving the "great questions of peace, prosperity and individual rights that face the world." Laura Bush has supported family planning in Texas and Mexico. Sadly, the first president Bush sacrificed common sense to ideology in order to become Reagan's running mate. The second president Bush should take this opportunity to re-establish U.S. leadership in international family planning.
Martha Campbell and Malcolm Potts are on the faculty of the School of Public Health at UC Berkeley.
Page B - 7
URL: http://sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?file=/c/a/2006/02/27/EDGU9GJCNE1.DTL

Press Release Contact: Sarah Hemingway 212-297-5207
For Immediate Release
September 16, 2005

Bush Administration Denies Funds 
for Global Women's Health

NEW YORK ­ The Bush Administration withheld funds today from UNFPA, the United Nations Population Fund, weakening the U.S. position as one of the most well respected leaders in global women's health. The State Department announced the decision in a letter to members of the Appropriations Committee, as President Bush left the UN World Summit in New York, which offered world leaders an opportunity to renew the commitments they made five years ago to end poverty. UNFPA's efforts to improve women's health and promote the rights of women are essential for achieving these goals.

"The Bush Administration is waging a morally misguided battle against the very organization that prevents maternal mortality and promotes the rights of women around the world," said Anika Rahman, President of Americans for UNFPA.

While the U.S. Congress allocates $34 million annually to UNFPA, the Bush Administration has refused to release the money since 2002, denying critical funding to the world's largest source of international assistance for the rights and health of women.

The Bush Administration charges that UNFPA supports China's coercive family planning programs yet a State Department team reported to then-Secretary of State Colin Powell on May 21, 2002: "We find no evidence that UNFPA has knowingly supported or participated in the management of a program of coercive abortion or involuntary stabilization in the [People's Republic of China]We therefore recommend that not more than $34 million, which has already been appropriated, be released to UNFPA."

UNFPA is an advocate for policy reform in China. On an ongoing basis, UNFPA urges and facilitates the Chinese government to conform to international human rights standards for family planning programs, to lift its birth limitation policy nationally, and respect the right of women to make their own decisions about contraception and childbearing. UNFPA has also strongly opposed the use of "social compensation fees."
- more -

"UNFPA's programs promote voluntary family planning and demonstrate exactly the kind of success Americans want to see," said Anika Rahman. "In fact, in the 32 counties where UNFPA operates in China, women's access to a wide range of contraceptive options has increased, while the abortion rate has decreased. Americans would be horrified to know that the U.S. stands in the way of improving the life and health of women around the world."

In 1969, when UNFPA was founded, 10 percent of women in the world used modern contraception. Today 60 percent do. UNFPA's work on the ground has led to a 30 percent increase in women's access to emergency obstetric care in target areas of Nicaragua, a 30 percent decrease in female genital cutting in target areas of Uganda, the integration of voluntary HIV counseling and testing into all family planning services, and changes in the way emergency humanitarian assistance is structured so that women's particular health and safety needs are considered.

Americans for UNFPA is a non-profit 501c3 organization dedicated to building American support for the work of UNFPA and to restoring the United States' moral and financial contribution to the organization. Please visit, http://www.americansforunfpa.org.

 

 

2005 CSUSB Environmental EXPO

 

 DC Activist Weekend, April 1-5, 2005
Sponsered by 
The Sierra Club, National Wildlife Federation, The Population Connection

 

From the Press Enterprise...

Inland growth tops state

POPULATION: Expansion dipped slightly last year, but most communities still
gained residents.

11:44 PM PDT on Monday, May 2, 2005

By JIM MILLER / Sacramento Bureau

SACRAMENTO - The Inland area's seemingly non-stop population surge seems to
have slowed a touch in 2004, but the region still gained tens of thousands of
residents, according to new state figures.

Growth in Riverside County, which ran above 4 percent in 2001, 2002 and 2003,
dipped to 3.82 percent in 2004. That was still the highest growth rate in the
state, however.

In San Bernardino County, the 2003 growth rate of 3 percent fell to 2.5 percent
in 2004 -- the 11thhighest rate statewide, according to figures released Monday
by the state Department of Finance.
CheckWidthImage(1,850,216);

 

The two counties added an estimated 117,000 residents last year, among the
highest totals ever as people continue their Inland quest for relatively
affordable homes.

"It's an extraordinarily high level," Inland economist John Husing said of the
population gains. He noted that the state had revised upward previous 2003
population estimates, which had the effect of decreasing the growth rate for
2004. Linda Gage, a demographer for the state Department of Finance, said it was
remarkable that the Inland area, which is among the most populous places in the
state, would still be growing at such a fast clip.

"You don't expect to see a place of nearly 2 million people to have highest
percentage growth in the state," Gage said, referring to Riverside County.

Some officials, though, voiced concern that Monday's figures could suggest a
slowdown in the Inland area's red-hot housing market.

"It's interesting because we're also tracking fewer builder permits," said
Borre Winkel, executive director of the Riverside County chapter of the state
Building Industry Association.

Monday's population estimates were based on building permits, reported births,
tax reports and other information monitored by the state.

Most Inland cities also experienced significant population growth in 2004, with
some rates approaching double digits.

In San Bernardino County, the high desert communities of Victorville and
Adelanto had the highest growth rates.

In Riverside County, Beaumont grew at a 14.1 percent clip in 2004, the state
reported. Indio, La Quinta and other Coachella Valley cities also added
thousands of residents.

"There's a big housing boom going on out there. But a lot of people out there
are being priced out of the market," Husing said.

Given the region's significant growth last year, it might come as a surprise
that some Inland communities lost people in 2004, according to the Department of
Finance.

The biggest loser, with a population the figures state shrunk by 204 people,
was Corona, whose estimated population fell from 144,274 to 144,070.

Corona Councilman Jeff Miller rejected the state population estimate as
incorrect.

"We've added several hundred dwelling units and our apartment vacancy rate is
almost zero," Miller said, adding that the city will ask the state to explain
how it came up with its figures.

Reach Jim Miller at (916)445-9973 or jmiller@pe.com

 

Home
What is Inland Planet? / What you can do / Why should we care? / Who to Contact 
34 Million Friends / Impact of Population / Partners and Allies  
Inland Planet Schedule of Events/ Previous Events 
Site Map /Contact Us 

Terms and Conditions
© Copyright 2005 Inlandplanet.org, All Rights Reserved.
All contents of this site covered by registered copyrights.
COPYRIGHT by Inland Planet.org. ALL RIGHTS RESERVED