In a new report, “Making the Case for U.S. International Family Planning Assistance,” Ipas President & CEO Elizabeth Maguire and colleagues Joseph Speidel, Steven Sinding, Duff Gillespie and Margaret Neuse praise the U.S. Agency for International Development (USAID) as a transformative leader in international population and family planning but lament stagnation in funding over the past decade and decline in USAID's global leadership.

The former directors of the Population and Reproductive Health Program of USAID describe huge and growing unmet need for family planning in many developing countries. Worldwide, more than 200 million women want to delay or avoid giving birth but lack access to modern contraceptive methods. That number is expected to increase by 40 percent by 2050, as record numbers of young people enter their reproductive years.

Increasing access to family planning has proven extremely effective in enhancing women’s lives, slowing population growth and spurring economic growth, the report notes, yet funding from the United States and other donors has fallen off sharply in recent years. Taking inflation into account, USAID’s current family planning budget is roughly equal to what it was in 1974.

“That level of support is grossly out of sync with global demand for family planning and with U.S. citizens’ strong support for this critical element of reproductive health care,” said Maguire.

The former directors call for a tripling in U.S. funding for international family planning, from $457 million in 2008 to $1.5 billion in 2014. They say the money should go to training and equipping health-care providers; expanding family planning programs in underserved countries; assuring USAID’s technical leadership; and renewing U.S. leadership and funding for global organizations, such as the United Nations Population Fund (UNFPA) and the International Planned Parenthood Federation (IPPF), which are making voluntary family planning accessible to some of the world’s most vulnerable populations.

“The return on this investment will be enormous,” Maguire said, “in terms of the well-being and health of women and families — including helping avert millions of unintended pregnancies, preventing unsafe abortions, and reducing infant and maternal deaths — as well as development.”

The report notes that reasserting U.S. leadership in international reproductive health also requires reversing the Reagan-era Global Gag Rule, which bars foreign organizations from using their own money for abortion care or advocacy if they accept U.S. aid for family planning. The policy’s impact in reducing availability of family planning services and commodities is well documented.

Speaking in her capacity as President and CEO of Ipas, Maguire noted that removing the Gag Rule and otherwise increasing access to family planning are the surest ways to reduce both unintended pregnancy and abortion, but that family planning alone will not eliminate the 20 million unsafe abortions that occur every year, claiming the lives of more than 66,000 women and girls.

“Women must be able to make their own reproductive decisions and exercise their fundamental reproductive rights safely,” she said. “To do that, they need broad access to information and services for both family planning and safe, legal abortion.”