New York, U.S.A. — Dr. Joycelyn Elders, 15th Surgeon General of the United States said, “The London Summit to Revitalize Family Planning promises to be one of the most important efforts in recent history to improve the education, health and lives of poor women and girls.” She further commented, “VCF Contraceptive Film, a safe, easy-to-use effective contraceptive, should be considered as one method of affordable birth control to offer to women around the world. VCF has been used by women throughout the United States for many years with great success for birth control.”

According to a new report from Save the Children, pregnancy is currently the biggest killer of teenage girls worldwide, with one million young women dying or suffering injury, infection or disease due to pregnancy or childbirth every year.

The report reveals that girls under 15 are five times more likely to die from pregnancy related causes than women in their 20s, while babies born to younger mothers are also at far greater risk. Nearly a million babies born to adolescent mothers die every year.

According to the manufacturer of VCF, Apothecus Pharmaceutical, CEO Dan Leon, commented, “VCF has distributed hundreds of millions of contraceptive films with incredible results, sustaining high levels of user loyalty through our clinics and retail stores.” Mr. Leon further commented that, “VCF would be a welcomed addition to the worldwide contraceptive arsenal to be distributed to underprivileged women around the world. We would welcome the opportunity to work with the Gates Foundation or any other foundation that promotes women’s health care issues worldwide.”

For decades, non-profit health clinics throughout the United States have been educating women on the advantages of VCF, and have made this non-prescription birth control method available to their patients. VCF definitely has its advantages, given that it is hormone free. It provides protection without the side effects normally associated with prescription birth control methods. VCF is ideal for women who can’t afford medical care and must rely on themselves to be vigilant about using contraception. Health professionals believe that VCF is an important and safe method in helping to reduce the unwanted pregnancy epidemic that exists today.

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Santa Barbara, U.S.A. — July 11 is World Population Day, an annual observance to educate the public about the problems of overpopulation and continuing population growth. It grew out of the public interest in Five Billion Day in 1987 when the global population reached five billion people. A quarter century later, world population now exceeds 7 billion and is growing by 80 million per year.

“This dire situation underscores the need to provide safe and effective family planning to the hundreds of millions of men and women who lack it. Families must have the ability to determine the number and spacing of their children,” said Marilyn DeYoung, Chairman of the Board of Californians for Population Stabilization (CAPS).

CAPS is a nonprofit  organization founded in 1986 that focuses specifically on preserving California’s future through the stabilization of the state’s human population. CAPS also works more broadly to educate about the overall impacts of overpopulation and the environmental impacts of “too many people” throughout the world. In recent years since nearly all of California’s runaway population growth has come from immigration, CAPS has focused  on this issue by sponsoring public and media awareness campaigns, working with lawmakers to promote more responsible policies, maintaining a growing network of member-activists, and conducting vital research about how to create a sustainable state.

A major report from Britain’s Royal Society last year noted that the population must be stabilized rapidly to avoid “a downward spiral of economic and environmental ills.” While world population has soared 40 percent since the first World Population Day, the United States has grown almost as rapidly, increasing 30 percent, from 242 million in 1987 to almost 314 million today.

“Continuing growth of the human population is the most serious environmental problem for our planet and for our nation. The consequences of that growth are all around us—loss of open space, air and water pollution, and never-ending sprawl. Habitat loss due to population growth is by far the greatest threat to wildlife. We must tackle this paramount issue,” stated DeYoung, who served on the President’s Commission on Population Growth and the American Future in 1970.

Image Courtesy of  Tan Wei Ming / Shutterstock.com

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Forced abortions in China have commonly been practiced for breaching the one-child policy. Hundreds of women are forced into late-term abortions every year. Two years ago, Xiao Ai Ying was forced to abort her eight month-old fetus; her story has been documented by al Jazeera news and shared on youtube. This year, a similar case triggered outrage in China as a picture of the 23-year-old Feng Jianmei lying on a bed, with the corpse of her baby by her side went viral online.

Similar to Ying, Jianmei was forcibly injected with a lethal chemical to induce an abortion. Deng Jiyuan, Jianmei’s 29-year-old husband, told CNN, “I’m angry and want justice; they forced her to abort our seven-month-old child, do they deserve to be called Communist Party officials who served the people?”

According to Malcom Moore of the Telegraph, the couple, as farmers, was allowed to have a second child under Chinese law, given the permission of their Local Family Planning bureau. Three months along with her pregnancy, Jianmei was asked by officials to fill out an application form, pay a fee, and change her Chinese registration permit to reflect that she lived in a rural area. The couple failed to fill out the form and could not pay 40,000 yuan ($6,300 USD).

“It should not be a cent less than that (40,000 yuan),” read a text message, allegedly sent to Deng Yan, Jiyuan’s sister by Yuan Fang, a family planning official. When the couple informed the officials they weren’t able to raise enough money, Jianmei was taken from her home on May 30 and given a lethal injection on June 2.

Al Jazeera news reported that Jianmei told Ms. Chai Ling, the founder of All Girls Allowed, an advocacy group focused on protecting women’s rights in China, that she never agreed to the forced abortion. According to Ling, Jianmei was held down by five strong men with a  pillow case over her head and was forced to press her finger with ink and paste it on the form. Jianmei gave birth to her dead child 36 hours after she was injected.

The abortion took place at the Zhenping County Hospital. Authorities in the province have admitted that the abortion was illegal. The pictures that angered Chinese web users was taken by A San, Jianmei’s cousin, and shared online on June 11, a week after the forced abortion.

China has been implementing family planning policies since the late 1970s in order to control the population growth rate, which is currently up to 1.3 billion people, the world’s largest.

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