We know that the contraception currently available to women is far from perfect. However, while it’s important that we look to improve the current offering of pills and hormonal implants it’s equally important to remember just how crucial access to contraception is when it comes to giving women control over their own bodies.
A report from the Family Planning 2020 initiativehas found that the number of women in the world’s poorest countries has grown to 300 million over the last four years. This is significant progress and means that more women than ever have access to contraception. For a long time, the issue has been that women who want to access contraception cannot get it.
The Family Planning 2020 initiative was started in 2012, it’s now reached its halfway point. The report reads ‘the world’s 69 poorest countries’ have ‘reached a new milestone’. For the first time in history ‘the number of women and girls using a modern method of contraception has topped 300 million.’
Every one of those women is representative of an unprecedented number of women who can now take full control of their lives and bodies, shaping their futures and their families’ futures.
According to the report, the most significant progress has been made in sub-Saharan Africa. Countries such as Ethiopia, Kenya, Lesotho, Malawi and Mozambique have seen their figures increase by 5 per cent or more over the last four years. To put that in perspective, that means that in Kenya an extra 1.15 million women are now using contraceptives. In Ethiopia it’s 1.98 million.
Since 2012, nearly 7.7 million more women in India have started using contraceptives, in Afghanistan it’s 296,000.
Contraception is what makes it possible for women to finish their educations, make a living and have control over what happens to their bodies and when. Hopefully one day, women around the world will have as much education and access to contraception as we do in the UK. We still aren’t at a point where every woman in the world who wants to access contraception is able to but this is pretty damn good progress.
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This article originally appeared on The Debrief.