Health: the family planning factor.

Abstract

One of the essential components of preventive health strategies along with a sanitary environment pure water and nutritious food is family planning. Concern for the personal health of women has spurred worldwide efforts to make contraceptives and safe legal abortion widely available. Women who bear children too early or too late in life women who bear too many children and women who bear children too close together put themselves and their children in danger. Despite knowledge of these risks a large majority of governments fail to provide all prospective parents with access to effective family planning measures. Although the number of deaths and how much disease the universal availability and wise use of family planning services could prevent it is known that some of the worlds least fortunate women are 20 times more likely to die in childbirth than their more privileged counterparts. Infant mortality rates also vary among societies by a factor of nearly 20. The failure to prevent high-risk pregnancies is 1 contributor to the appallingly high mortality rates of mothers and children among the worlds poor. When contraceptives are unavailable not used or fail more and more women seek induced abortion. 35 million and possibly as many as 55 million pregnancies are terminated each year. When an abortion is performed early in a pregnancy by trained personnel it involves considerably less risk for a woman than pregnancy and childbirth do. All common methods of contraception including the oral contraceptive encompass fewer risks than do pregnancy and childbirth.