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| Making the Case for U.S. International Family Planning Assistance is a full-length report detailing the need for increasing funding for family planning. |
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Ipas President and CEO Elizabeth Maguire and other former directors of U.S. international family planning assistance program continue to call for increasing U.S. funding for international family planning. Their latest call to action appears in the May 2, 2009 issue of The Lancet.
In this essay, Maguire and the other authors call for increasing the family planning budget of the U.S. Agency for International Development (USAID) from its current level of $457 million to $1.2 billion in 2010. This increase in funds, they note, will contribute to a “virtuous circle,” not only reducing reductions in economic and social development from unwanted pregnancies, but also contributing to poverty reduction and other Millennium Development Goals. The authors also applaud President Barack Obama’s decisions to rescind the Global Gag Rule and to restore funding to the U.N. Population Fund (UNFPA), which went unfunded during the Reagan and Bush administrations.
Together, Maguire and the other four authors of this essay (Duff Gillespie, Margaret Neuse, Steven Sinding, and J. Joseph Speidel) represent 28 consecutive years of leadership of the Population and Reproductive Health Program within USAID, from 1978 to 2006. Their arguments are described in greater detail in a full-length report released in January, Making the Case for U.S. International Family Planning Assistance.
For more information, contact media@ipas.org