But now some mullahs in Afghanistan are distributing condoms. Others are quoting the Quran to encourage longer breaks between births by breast-feeding for two years. Use of the pill, condoms and injected forms of birth control rose to 27% over eight months in three rural areas - up to half the woman in one area - once the benefits were explained one-on-one by health workers, according to UNICEF.

It is important to women, who do not want to be pregnant now, to prevent death from an unwanted pregnancy - "especially when we could have helped her," said lead author Dr. Douglas Huber, who conducted the study for U.S.-based nonprofit Management Sciences for Health. "The fastest, cheapest, easiest way to reduce maternal deaths in Afghanistan is with contraception."

37 mullahs endorsed using contraceptives as a way to increase the time between births, some delivering the message during Friday prayers. "All the mullahs at the community level knew of these things that the Prophet Muhammad himself advised his followers." ... "This was not a hard sell."

Islam does not fundamentally oppose birth control. Everything from vasectomies to abortions are supported in various parts of the Muslim world.

Marie Stopes International has trained 3,500 religious leaders nationwide on the issue since 2003. It distributed more than 2 million condoms last year, some of them distributed by mullahs, at hours after clinics were closed.

The Health Ministry collaborated with nonprofit organizations to spread the word to both Sunni and Shia Muslims that using birth control was 300 times safer than giving birth in Afghanistan. They also involved husbands in the project and sought to dispel beliefs that contraceptives have negative side effects, such as infertility.

The Health Ministry plans to expand the program nationally and will invlove USAID, the European Union and the World Bank in the scale-up.

Ciudad Juárez, across the Rio Grande from El Paso, Texas, was on the front line of this radical advance, with their maquila factories, making anything from car parts to potato crisps for transnational corporations. All the finished goods were quickly dispatched duty- and tax-free, across the Rio Grande to the US.

Today, in Ciudad Juárez, hundreds of young women have been raped, murdered, disappeared. No one is ever convicted of a crime. Young men in their thousands die horribly in open warfare over drugs. And Mexico's economy has collapsed. Since 1994, half-a-million Mexicans have been leaving their country every year. From April to June 2009 the economy shrank by more than 10%; 700,000 jobs were lost between October 2008 and May 2009.

So now we see the shipwreck of corporate globalization.

The 'globalization' of local economies enabled corporations to scour the world for the cheapest labour, the lowest costs, the most compliant governments, but the enterprise was fatally flawed from the start.

First, real costs, like those of international transport, were off-loaded directly on to the ecosystem, squandering finite resources (including the ecosystem itself) at an increasingly reckless rate.

Second, by paying people less to produce more, corporate globalization left them without the means to acquire all the stuff they were producing. The result was 'over-production', 'over-investment' or 'deflation' - a 'disease' that struck Japan in the early 1990s and has yet to find a cure.

Third, by shifting production very rapidly to countries like China, it generated huge imbalances in world trade, since countries like the US or Britain had little to offer in exchange besides money they hadn't actually earned.

Fourth, the only option left was to borrow. Private banks were allowed to make their own money, to lend in as many multiples of their assets as they gambled they could get away with; thereby artificially inflating their assets and making of themselves the most lucrative transnational corporations of the lot, partly because they didn't have to produce anything at all except money.

Finally, by suppressing both the free association of labour and government 'interference', the enterprise set up the eventual demise of democratic engagement of any kind. It was thought that self-correcting markets alone would decide - which turns out to be quite self-destructive.

What first appeared to be a strictly financial crisis turned out to be due to corporate globalization, hooked on debt, a deadly vice where no-one knows the value of anything.

In August 2007, people who started posting their house keys through the letterboxes of loan sharks across the US, signalling the shipwreck of a misbegotten 'global' enterprise.

2008 and 2009 was the first time world trade slumped, silencing the corporate mantra that it could only ever expand. General Motors, once the world's biggest transnational corporation, is bankrupt. The incurable Japanese disease has become a pandemic. China spends $500 billion to sustain its domestic economy.

National government support is keeping the wreck afloat only by heresy. Financial markets is are being repaid with the very same funds that were used (or printed) to bail them out virtually for free.

No one knows how much bad debt has been dumped on the public and remains to be redeemed. The governments of some 16 countries, including Ireland, Iceland, Greece, Estonia and Hungary, are already bankrupt; many others have effectively been so for years, and most of the remainder will doubtless become so soon enough. If the wreck is ever refloated, who then will save the banks from themselves and everyone else from the banks?

The only way out is for citizens to pay higher taxes for worse public services. Taxing wealth is now essential, and not just on moral or political principle. The alternative, which is to raise regressive taxes and dismantle public services, would simply be to intensify 'over-production', exacerbate the Japanese disease, court democratic disgrace and promote despotic extortion.

The 'Unholy Trinity' of the International Monetary Fund (IMF), World Trade Organization (WTO) and World Bank, has plainly fallen down on the job.

Even the tiniest percentage tax on speculative currency or similar transactions would act as a 'disincentive' and raise plenty of resources for the UN Millennium Development Goals by the target date of 2015, which is currently receding over an infinite horizon. That would put some cash into the hands of people who need it most - and would therefore use it best.

The IMF could have helped with both of these urgent tasks, which at some point have to be orchestrated internationally, but they're far too busy trying to refloat the shipwreck.

The WTO should be asking why two decades of 'corporate responsibility' - to whom? - have produced nothing of the sort.

Hopefully people will decide to take a firmer democratic grip; some early signs are in Egypt and Latin America. Democratic deglobalization has been proposed for some time now.

Corporate globalization can be overtaken by a renewed sense of public purpose and solidarity, a new internationalism reaching well beyond the dismal, poisonous horizons of high finance. And if the choice turns out to be between democratic consent or despotic extortion, which will you choose? After all, only democratic consent offers any choice at all.

http://www.pathfind.org/site/PageServer?pagename=girl2woman_index

The UK would be "top priority" if production was expanded abroad, considering that it has the highest teenage pregnancy rate in Europe.

In a German study of 12,970 13 to 20-year-olds, a quarter said a standard condom was too large.

The research head said: "The result that shocked us concerned young boys who display apparently risky behaviour. They have more of a tendency not to protect themselves. They do not have a very developed sexual knowledge. They do not understand the consequences of what they are doing and leave the young girls to take care of the consequences."

The age of consent in Switzerland is 16, although if the age difference is not more than three years there will be no punishment.   Karen Gaia says: Hard to believe! Is it hormones in the water, or toxic plastics? I hope these children actually use the condom, but I doubt it.

Thousands of Kenyan women die from unsafe abortions each year. Kenya's abortion fatality rates are substantially higher than in the African region as a whole and more than nine times higher than for developed regions. 35% of maternal deaths are due to unsafe abortion.

Kenya's abortion law is one of the most restrictive in the world. The Center for Reproductive Rights says Kenya's law has not stopped women having abortions - it has only made them more dangerous. There are conditions under which abortion can be legal, but there is "a maze of misinformation as well as personal, financial, and bureaucratic barriers, due to the stigma, lack of legal clarity, and prohibitive costs surrounding the procedure."

"In Kenya, a young woman's odds of becoming a victim of sexual violence and becoming pregnant are remarkably high. But if she gets pregnant, she can't get an abortion without risking her life."

We have perhaps 40 years to radically transform agriculture, work out how to grow more food without exacerbating environmental problems, and simultaneously cope with climate change. The number of undernourished people already exceeds 1 billion; feeding this many people requires more than incremental changes.

Scientists and engineers can make a big difference at every step from field to fork, from providing new strategies to smallholder farmers who must balance the needs of livestock and crops to helping farmers get the most from fertilizers, water, soil and seeds. Innovation will be key to monitoring all stages of food production, from defending harvests against pests and disease to providing critical information and infrastructure. And training enough scientists in all these areas will be essential.

Science and technology alone cannot guarantee food security. Economic, political, and psychological issues also play key roles. Yet there is optimism that a Green Revolution is possible in Africa, although maintaining good governance throughout the world is crucial to success.

This issue focuses on how to increase the supply of basic staples. But eating less meat also helps. An alternative source of protein is insects. The quest for food security may require us all to reconsider our eating habits, and the energy consumption and environmental costs that sustain those habits.   Karen Gaia says: promises, promises. Maybe more would be revealed if I had a subscription to the related articles, but I wonder how optimistic one can afford to be in light of the fact so many will be left hungry if science fails and we don't do something about population growth - like meeting the unmet need for contraception.

President Obama's health care reform proposal would make a real difference for the women and families who rely on Planned Parenthood. It would extend health care coverage to tens of millions of Americans; guarantee access to affordable preventive screenings for cancer and other life-saving tests; protect women against gender discrimination by private insurers; end the practice of dropping coverage because of pre-existing conditions; and significantly increase access to reproductive health care.

We need to defeat Bart Stupak's abortion ban, and fix the anti-choice Nelson amendment that was included in Senate legislation. Follow the link to take action.

In light of the difficult economic and budgetary climate, and the stagnant levels during the Bush administration, the proposed increase is especially significant If appropriated by Congress, it would be the largest funding for international FP/RH programs—not accounting for inflation—ever approved and 54% increase over FY 2008.

$666 million would be for bilateral programs administered by the U.S. Agency for International Development(USAID), which provides family planning assistance in more than 50 countries. $50 million is proposed for a U.S. contribution to the U.N. Population Fund (UNFPA), which provides critical FP/RH care in more than 150 countries. This is a $5 million cut from the current contribution to the UNFPA.

28% would be devoted to "efforts to meet urgent global challenges such as natural and manmade disasters, poverty, disease, malnutrition, and threats of further instability from climate change and rapid population growth. . . These investments improve people's lives and makes them less vulnerable to the ravages of poverty and the threat of instability that extreme poverty breeds. Improving the most basic human conditions not only reflects our values; it enhances our security. Left unmet, these conditions lead too often to conflict, instability, and failed states."

Also released was a Global Health Initiative (GHI) document - http://www.pepfar.gov/documents/organization/136504.pdf, detailing how the GHI will dedicate new resources and funding, totaling $63 billion over six years, which includes goals and targets to prevent 54 million unintended pregnancies through increasing modern contraceptive prevalence to 35% in assisted countries and reducing the number of first births to women under 18.

The Obama administration's three highest non-security-related funding priorities in its budget request—global health, climate change, and hunger and food security—are all inextricably linked with demographic trends and population and family planning issues.

215 million women in developing countries who want to space or limit childbearing will still be reach of modern contraception, despite the proposed funding increase.

Goals include improved pastoral care of marital relationships, domestic abuse and infertility, and training for prospective clergy in sexuality-related matters.

According to the manifesto, religious leaders should provide lifelong age-appropriate education for youth and adults and to become more effective advocates for comprehensive sexuality education and sexual and reproductive health in society.

Clergymen who are often first responders in matters of domestic violence and potential (and actual) suicides by young people struggling with sexual identity have usually received little to no training for the job.

The document offers an uncompromised progressive vision that does not seek "common ground" with conservative evangelicals and Catholics.

It calls for full access to reproductive health care, including abortion, marriage equality, full inclusion of gay, lesbian, bisexual and transgender people in the life of religious communities.

The report as generated only a little media attention but progress is already being made.

The president of Southern Baptist Theological Seminary saw it as "evidence of the continued subversion of biblical authority and confessional integrity that characterizes the revolt against orthodoxy in so many churches."

But he acknowledged: "Our pews are filled with people worried about their sexuality, wondering how to understand these things, struggling with same-sex attractions, tempted to stray from their marriages, enticed by Internet pornography and wondering how to bring their sexuality under submission to Christ." And evangelicals "should not avoid its urgency in calling pastors and Christian leaders to teach and preach about sex and sexuality."

The Religious Institute is a national network of more than 5,000 clergy and religious leaders from 50 religious traditions. Its founder Rev. Debra Haffner, is a former executive director of SIECUS (Sexuality Information and Education Council of the United States), the nation's leading association of sex educators.

Advances have been made in the last 10 years, with female clergy taking leadership roles in major denominations; a woman is presiding bishop of The Episcopal Church; Lesbian, gay, transgendered and bisexual people gaining acceptance; and marriage equality being recognized by the United Church of Christ, the Union for Reform Judaism, Reconstructionist Rabbinical Association and the Unitarian Universalist Association.

One Church recently announced that clergy will now be required to be "competent" to address matters of sexuality in the lives of their parishioners.

The manifesto said that 75% of progressive clergy had not addressed sex education and 40% had not preached about sexual orientation over a two year period. 70% had never preached on reproductive justice.

Issues that parishoners have where they need the help of clergy are: sexual abuse, marriages breaking up, and infertility.

When matters of sexuality are avoided, it shows up in clergy sex-abuse scandals. "And it's not just the Catholics." When you can't talk about it in your churches, where can you talk about it. Silence contributes to people's alienation and aloneness.

Five mainstream denominations are working on mandatory sexual competence for clergy and 15 denominations on matters that affect everyone. a number of denominations have focused on issues of domestic violence. All would benefit from clergy training and open discussion of matters of sexuality, including the teaching of young people and strategies for keeping children safe from sexual predators.

Dr. Martin Marty, the eminent historian of religion at the University of Chicago compared sexuality to religion. "If you get it right, it's beautiful. But if you get it wrong, it really messes you up."

Newly released statistics showed births to mothers ages 15 to 19 dropped to a record low of 35.2 per 1,000 in 2008, according to the California Department of Public Health. In 2007, the rate was 37.1 births.

In Ventura County, the birth rate went from 36.2 to 34.1 per 1,000 births to teen mothers.

Latino teens continued to have the highest birth rate statewide and countywide.

87% of teen births in Ventura County were to Latino teens compared with 11% to white teens, and only 1% to Black, Asian, and Native American teens.

Nancy Maxson, coordinator of health services for Ventura Unified School District said that some of the newer immigrant families consider it "more acceptable for older men to be with their daughters" "The thought is that they can take care of them." And families in poverty, not just Latinos, may be looking for more practical support through a larger family.

Maxson said Ventura Unified talks "about medically appropriate tools to prevent pregnancy, while stressing abstinence, in seventh grade.

Planned Parenthood offers a peer advocates program in which teen volunteers, with their parents' permission, talk to other teens about sex and pregnancy. It also offers a Teen Success Program, in which teen mothers and their babies meet once a week. "Our goal in the program is to help them maintain their current family size, complete high school and seek or pursue further education."

A California Department of Public Health spokesman said California saved an estimated $98 million dollars in medical and other social expenses because of the decline of births to teen mothers from 53,393 in 2007 to 51,704 in 2008.

Preventing teen pregnancies saves the U.S. $9 billion a year, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. Teen mothers have higher rates of pre-term births, lower-birth weight-infants, and a higher rate of infant death.

Compared to mothers who delay childbearing until the age of 20 to 21 years, teen mothers are more likely to drop out of high school, remain single parents, have chronic medical conditions, and rely more heavily on publicly provided healthcare, CDC officials said.

The Senate version was a carefully crafted compromise that left neither side happy. The language will have to be finessed again if a final bill is to clear the House. One idea involves inserting more-restrictive language later into a spending bill.

The question is: should health-insurance policies that people would buy with federal subsidies be allowed to offer abortion coverage? In the House last year, Rep. Bart Stupak (D., Mich.) won language denying the abortion coverage; the bill passed 220-215.

The Senate version allows insurers to offer abortion coverage as long as customers write a separate check to pay for it, but Mr. Stupak said the Senate version left too big a loophole, while abortion-rights supporters argued that it would be too cumbersome for insurance companies to collect separate checks and they wouldn't cover abortion at all.

In the U.S., the runoff from farms along the Mississippi river of waste water and fertilizer, mainly nitrogen and phosphorus, pour billions of pounds of excess nutrients into the Gulf of Mexico, creating a dead zone, where waters rich in mineral and organic nutrients promote the growth of algae, reducing the dissolved oxygen content and causing the extinction of fish and other marine life starting from the mouth of the Mississippi River and spanning sometimes all the way to the Texas border.

The Dead Zone was first recorded in the early 1970's. It originally occurred every two to three years, but now occurs annually, and over the past five years has covered 6,000 square miles.

The Gulf of Mexico dead zone threatens valuable commercial and recreational Gulf fisheries that generate about $2.8 billion per year. Commercial fishermen are forced to fish elsewhere or stop altogether. Some species of HABs have been proven to cause negative health effects on humans. Advancements in science and management have been made, yet no real difference has been made to the size of the dead zones.

High food prices have also contributed to the crisis.

FAO said the level of hunger presented a "serious risk" to world peace and security.

Almost all of the world's undernourished live in developing countries, and most living in the Asia-Pacific region, with sub-Saharan Africa the next worst-hit.

"Investment in agriculture must be increased because for the majority of poor countries a healthy agricultural sector is essential to overcome poverty and hunger and is a pre-requisite for overall economic growth."

Because lower export demand and reduced foreign investment are likely to hit urban jobs harder, poor people living in cities will probably face the most severe problems in coping with the global recession, the UN says.

Families depending on remittances from relatives working abroad will see a substantial decrease in incomes.

Borrowing from international capital markets is "more limited" in a global crisis.

Prices in world markets declined during the food and fuel crisis of 2006-08, but remain 24% higher in real terms by the end of 2008 compared to 2006.

"For poor consumers, who spend up to 60% of their incomes on staple foods, this means a strong reduction in their effective purchasing power," the FAO said.   Karen Gaia says: No mention of 80 million more mouths to feed each year. How sad that the real problem is not recognized.

In Lathrop, Manteca and Tracy, California, among some of the world's most productive farmland, you can find streets of foreclosed home, looking like a 21st century ghost town, with rock-bottom discounts on empty starter mansions.

Here population nearly doubled in 10 years, and home prices tripled and urban planning circles hailed the boom as the new America at the far exurban fringe. But others saw it as the residential embodiment of the Edward Abbey line that "growth for the sake of growth is the ideology of the cancer cell."

Now median home prices have fallen from $500,000 to $150,000, one in eight houses are in some stage of foreclosure and the crime rate has spiked well above the national average, and unemployment hovers around 1%.

Nationwide, foreclosure increase 119% from two years ago. Owners of 1 in 10 mortgages owe more than their houses are worth, and many just walk away. Without vested owners, vandalism runs rampant and the place becomes a slum. Only 11% of the people in this valley could afford the median home price.

Through immigration and high birth rates, the United States is expected to add another 100 million people by 2050. We've already added 105 million people since 1970; we have a net gain of one person every 13 seconds.

This housing boom was spurred by the state's broken tax system where cities were hampered by by property tax limitations and increased revenue by the easiest route: expanding urban boundaries. Developers plowed up walnut groves and vineyards to pay for services demanded by new school parents and park users.

A lesson can be learned from cities like San Francisco, Portland, Seattle and San Diego, which have stable and recovering home markets, have fairly strict development codes, trying to hem in their excess sprawl. Developers said these cities would eventually price the middle class out, and start to empty, but this hasn't happened. Instead, the free-for-all cities like Las Vegas, the Phoenix metro area, South Florida, this valley - are the most troubled, the suburban slums.   Karen Gaia says: Population growth feeds these 'booms'. Build it and they will come, say the developers, confident that growth is always the answer. They have no idea about carrying capacity. And most people still do not realize that economic hard times are related to carrying capacity.

The rider, proposed by U.S. Sen. Dianne Feinstein, D-Calif. could scuttle a delicately negotiated effort to balance protections for endangered fish with the water needs of farms and residents of Southern California.

After three years of drought, the state is head for the third year of an emergency fishing ban to protect dwindling salmon runs, while populations of the Delta smelt and other fish continue to crash.

Feinstein only recently denounced a similar amendment at the behest of California water districts; her reversal may largely be due to lobbying by the Westlands Water District which saw the federal government cut its supply of water from the Delta dwindle to just 10% of the amount it holds contracts for. The district's chief deputy manager said "We're going to pursue every right and legal avenue we have to protect ourselves."

But fish-related restrictions account for only 15 to 20% of the cutbacks; the vast majority of the water shortage is due to the drought.

Last week judge Oliver Wanger ordered the Delta pumps to run at maximum capacity, which helped capture the surge of water delivered by a massive winter storm, but only for six days. Feinstein's rider would force federal officials to keep the pumps running at the highest levels currently permitted, allowing water agencies to pump an extra million acre-feet of water out of the Delta during the winter and spring, twice as much water from the Delta as they could were the current fish protections totally eliminated.   Karen Gaia says: With California's bulging population, the state is scrambling to provide enough water during drought years. It is no surprise that wildlife populations will suffer first. But the human population will suffer in the long run, as population continues to grow and exceed carrying capacity.

A global conference on food security and climate change in dry areas was held in Amman, Jordan. Experts reported that improved irrigation techniques in rainfed cropping will allow farmers to more than double their wheat yields using only one-third the water they would use with full irrigation; the new methods have been shown to boost farmers' yields up to five-fold over those crops which relied on rainfall only. The dry areas in the developing world, home to about 1/4 of the world's population.

The same areas that are most affected by drought and water scarcity are also challenged by high population growth, climatic unreliability, frequent droughts, and widespread poverty, according to the Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO).

Per capita water availability has dropped to as little as 170 cubic meters per year. The water scarcity standard is 1000 cubic meters. Dr. Mahmoud Solh, Director General of the International Center for Agricultural Research in the Dry Areas (ICARDA) said "There is a direct relationship between access to water and access to food and feed security. Unless we form a united front that responds effectively to water scarcity in agriculture and to the impacts of climate change, the future food security, economic development, and social stability of the entire region will be put in jeopardy."

Egypt, Iraq, Jordan, Lebanon, Palestine, Syria and Yemen will work jointly to improve water management in agriculture on the Water and Livelihoods Initiative (WLI), which will focus on improving rural livelihoods through sustainable land and water management in three agro-systems—irrigated agriculture, rainfed agriculture and rangelands.

Rainfed areas make up 80% of the world's farmland. Rainfed agriculture can be enhanced through efficient practices like supplemental irrigation and water harvesting.

Research on water harvesting in the Jordan steppe has shown how 50% of rainfall runoff can be harvested and used to grow useful vegetation cover for rangelands and to reverse desertification. Also, GIS, geographical information systems, has been used to select appropriate locations for water harvesting from among thousands of possibilities.

We should shift our focus from land productivity, which usually ignores the amount of water used, to "water productivity," the biophysical, economic, social and environmental returns from a unit volume of water used.

Australia's population growth is 1.252% per year - using the 65% figure quoted by the interviewer. To reduce emissions 60% by 2050, it would require a 2.291% reduction. This means, to accomodate the projected population growth AND to reduce overall annual emissions by 60%, the annual rate of decrease of per capita emissions would have to be cut 3.543% per year over the next forty years. In other words, the per capita annual emissions would have to be cut in half every 19.6 years!

Is Minister Wong basing her policy recommendations on Walt Disney's First Law: "Wishing will make it so."

Actually, the present rate of growth of Australia's population is quoted as being 1.8% per year, not 1.252% that the interview claimed. If this current higher rate continues, Australia's population will double by 2050 and would reach a density of one person per square meter over the whole continent in just over 700 years!

Should Australia encourage continued population growth or should the people of Australia act to stop the growth before Nature stops it? And why not stop it now while there are still some resources and some open spaces?

Asia's vast irrigation systems accounts for 70% of the world's total irrigated land."

Trade to meet the demand for water will impose a huge and politically untenable burden on the economies of many developing countries, said IWMI.

The Asian population is expected to reach 5 billion by 2050. With this and the growing demand for meat products, the region must double its supplies of food and animal feed crops, South Asia would need to irrigate 30% more harvested land, which would demand 57% more water unless water efficiency improves. In East Asia, farmers would need to increase the amount of irrigated farmland by 47%, with a 70% increase in water use.

If global temperatures increase with climate change, irrigation demands in arid and semi-arid parts of Asia are expected to rise. Asian rivers from the Himalayas will see reduced flows as glaciers recede.

In South Asia, the area of land irrigated by large-scale surface irrigation has declined since the early 1990s due largely to poorly maintained infrastructure.

60% of India's farmers are using their own low-cost irrigation pumps despite the government's heavy investment in expanding surface irrigation; this may result in groundwater over-exploitation, which could lead to regional food crises and widespread social unrest.

Some solutions include public-private partnerships, improved irrigation infrastructure, the use of groundwater aquifers for storing water, and more efficient use of rainwater on farmland.

"When resources-water, arable land, other natural assets-become scarcer, we know that those without power will lose out and become even more vulnerable," said Gunilla Carlsson, the Swedish minister for international development cooperation.

At the same time, the world's population grows and increasing biofuel production converts grain into fuel for cars, competing with the growing demand for food.

Nigeria's population has tripled from 1961 to 2007, while livestock populations grew 12-fold. The increased human and animal food needs have placed excessive demands on soils, with Nigeria losing 867,000 acres of cropland and rangeland to desertification each year.

Saudi Arabia, following the 1970s oil export embargo, decided to become self-sufficient in wheat by pumping water from a non-replenishable fossil aquifer and has finally acknowledged they cannot continue to grow wheat. Over half the world's population lives in countries where aquifers are being depleted faster than they can be replenished.

While global food production still continues to increase, its rate of increase has slowed, growing by 64% from 1970 to 1990, and only 24% from 1990 to 2009.

Part of the increase was due to expanding irrigation: world irrigated area tripled from 1950 to 2000. Water availability has shown almost no growth in the past decade.

The world irrigated area per thousand people has declined from a high of over 47 hectares in the late 1970s to only 43 hectares per thousand people in 2007.

The number of hungry people in the world declined to 825 million in the mid-1990s, but by 2009 risen to more than 1 billion.

Plan B 4.0 offers suggestions on improvements to land and water management and measures to address population growth. Follow the link for more information.

Saudi Arabia has no minimum legal age for marriage, but there is a proposed law for a minimum age for marriage of between 16 and 18.. Activists hope that the case will be a watershed in the campaign to ban the practice.

The girl was married last year against her wishes and those of her mother.

A lawyer for the Saudi Human Rights commission said: " ... it is in the hands of the court but the commission is firmly on the child's side." If a divorce is not granted, the commission will pursue the matter through the appeals court.

Some judges and clerics have used the Prophet Muhammad's marriage to a nine-year-old girl as justification of child marriage, but Sheikh Abdullah al-Manie, a senior Saudi cleric, declared that the Prophet's marriage 14 centuries ago could not be used to justify child marriages today.   Karen Gaia says: Child marriages add to the number of generations alive at one time, as well as result in more children per woman, since child brides are seldom given any options in life except produce children and keep the house. Often these young brides are too young to produce children and end up having obstetric fistulas or die in childbirth.

The business of promoters, builders and architects is promoting growth. But growth doesn't pay for itself, not at the community level or national level. The more you grow the greater your debt load. Colorado has had decades of wild and largely uncontrolled growth and is now practically bankrupt.

People don't like the constant increases in taxes needed to pay the costs of growth and they vote for tax limitation measures. Then the growth promoters to find ways around these limitations, so the growth continues and the consequent problems escalate rapidly. This happens in California as well as in Colorado.

From a book "Better Not Bigger", Eben Fodor wrote that every new house built in Oregon costs the Oregon taxpayer something in the order of $25,000 in costs not paid by taxes on the construction of the home itself.

Utilities are now fighting for the right to tax customers for the costs of planning and construction. The investors should be required to bear these responsibilities, and when the plant was finished you could figure the cost into the rate system- so that the people that built it would be reimbursed. State regulators are allowing utilities to charge payers for planning costs- even if it isn't clear that the plants need to be built. This is a perpetual growth promoting situation.

Investors need to realize that there's a time to grow, but as some point, any further growth is detrimental.

In Bartlett's book titled, "The Essential Exponential for the Future of our Planet," overpopulation raises the number of constituents per elected official, making it harder for individuals to gain access to representatives and have a voice in politics. Also, overpopulation breeds more government regulation to cope with problems caused by population pressure.

In the 1990's the US population grew by 13.1%, while the number of members in the House of Representatives didn't grow at all; another way of saying that democracy declined by 13.1%.

With the number of constituents per representatives multipling, it's much easier as a politician to take your ideas from the lobbyist who has plenty of money.

The terms "sustainable" and "sustainability" are popularly used to describe "activities that are ecologically laudable," but unsustainable. How can the reader decide whether publications are seeking to illuminate or obfuscate?

Both smart growth and dumb growth destroy the environment. The only difference is that smart growth destroys the environment with good taste.

In Al Gore's book & film, "An Inconvenient Truth," Gore never mentions curbing population growth. This is a silent lie, very discouraging.

Those who profit from (uneconomic)growth will use their considerable resources to convince the community that the community should pay the costs of growth.

The Tragedy of the Commons relates to things like the world's fisheries a type of "commons". This is tragic for local fishermen who have lived off the oceans for centuries.

The economist, Kenneth Boulding, is known for saying "Anyone who thinks that steady growth can continue indefinitely, is either a madman or an economist."

Boulding's Three Laws are "The Dismal Theorem" : If the only ultimate check on the growth of population is misery, then the population will grow until it is miserable enough to stop its growth; "The Utterly Dismal Theorem" : any technical improvement can only relieve misery for a while, for so long as misery is the only check on population, the improvement will enable population to grow, and will soon enable more people to live in misery than before. The final result of improvements, therefore, is to increase the equilibrium population which is to increase the total sum of human misery; "The moderately cheerful form of the Dismal Theorem" : If something else, other than misery and starvation, can be found which will keep a prosperous population in check, the population does not have to grow until it is miserable and starves, and it can be stably prosperous.

The last US president that worried about population was Richard Nixon. He charted a major study called "The Rockefeller Commission Report." The conclusion was that they couldn't see any benefit to further population growth in the US. The study was put on the shelf and forgotten.

Bartlett says that Malthus presents population problems very clearly. Translated to today's problems, Malthus would read something like this: "Population growth has the potential to outstrip the growth in production of any of the resources that are necessary to sustain our population."

The notion of many is that science and technology will save us, so why worry about it? A state senator once said to Bartlett, "I'm not worried about running out of petroleum, you (pointing to me) scientists will figure out what ever we need." When asked what was the last new source of energy scientists found, he didn't have an answer. Innovation on the large scale required by our overpopulated society will take time and costs billions of dollars.

Newly created jobs in a community temporarily lowers the unemployment rate, but then people move into the community to restore the unemployment rate to its earlier higher value. For years, we have promoted an insane policy of exporting jobs and importing people. Any country that has to import people to do the work of the country is unsustainable.

Carrying capacity is a measure of how many people can be supported indefinitely. Sustainability requires that the size of the population be less than or equal to the carrying capacity of the ecosystem for the desired standard of living.

Social Security and such projects are Ponzi schemes. They depend on having more and more people paying every year or they collapse.

If you change fertility rates it can take 50-70 years before you see the full effects of a change in fertility. This is called population momentum which is a mismatch to our democracy. Politicians implement changes that benefit us in the short term over the long term.

David Pimentel, a global agricultural scientist at Cornell University says that a sustainable world population living at current US dietary level would consist of two billion people. Also, he suggests that a sustainable US population at current dietary levels would have to be around 130-150 million people, which is the population of the US around World War II.

The key is to make family planning available widely throughout the US and the world - with the goal that every child is a wanted child.

With increased growth you have to provide police, fire, schools, waste removal, clean water, and a variety of other infrastructure projects. These services aren't paid for by growth. Schools, for example, get their operating expenses from the taxes and to get capital expenses they have to issue bonds. Thus, all tax payers have to pay higher taxes to accommodate schools for new kids.

The solution is to tax growth, put a tax on real estate transactions and use this tax to fund new projects.

Economists think of infinite substitutability. They cite the shifting out of whale oil to petroleum or from wood to coal. We already know the substitutes that exist are very costly to access.

Growth never pays for itself. Now the federal government is paying for state schools, highways, sewage systems, bridges. This has happened because the local economy can't support local population growth.

But inflation is a tax on everyone; if the federal government issues bonds to pay for the consequences of growth (infrastructure, etc) this is likely to result in inflation. Looking at our national debt levels, the inflation could be very severe.

The US population growth rate is the highest of any industrial nation.   Karen Gaia says: Prof Bartlett is very good at stating the problem, but needs to expand on the solutions since many people are queasy about the China solution. Bartlett needs to tell how the U.S. lowered its fertility rate from 4.0 in the 1960s, to around 2 in the 1980s - all voluntarily, once modern contraception became available.

The Kenya director of the World Food Programme (WFP) said: "People are already going hungry, malnutrition is preying on more and more young children, cattle are dying". The WFP is supplying 2.6 million Kenyans with food aid and hopes to increase that number by 1.2 million. Pasture and water for livestock is quickly dwindling.

Many parts of Kenya have experienced three or even four consecutive seasons of failed rains. The Government expects the main maize harvest to fall nearly one-third below the five-year average.

Acute malnutrition rates among children under the age of five are over 20% in some areas. "WFP is aiming to help almost 1 in every 10 Kenyans to cope with this serious crisis but we can't do it without money."

The agency also hopes the influx of funds will allow it to expand its school feeding programme by 100,000 to reach almost 1.2 million children, currently the Kenyan government is providing meals to 500,000 young people.

WFP said it wants to provide food aid to 108 million people in 74 countries this year, but is experiencing funding shortfalls, including over $160 million for Somalia and nearly $100 million for Ethiopia, with an unprecedented $3 billion total budget shortfall this year, while $6.7 billion is needed.

Mr Gates himself is stepping up investment in carbon-free energy and green technology.

"If just 1 per cent of the $100 billion goal [for carbon reduction] came from vaccine funding, then 700,000 more children could die from preventable diseases. In the long run, not spending on health is a bad deal for the environment because improvements in health, including voluntary family planning, lead people to have smaller families, which in turn reduces the strain on the environment."

Gates, in an interview with the Financial Times, said that, by tackling child mortality, his existing programmes were helping reduce the birth rate and cut demographic pressure, while work on improved agricultural crops that were drought resistant was helping to deal with the consequences of global warming.

Gates felt that energy consumption would not be sufficient to tackle climate change; the best solution for global warming was for-profit investment in new carbon-free energy technologies.

In a study by Elizabeth Miller, MD, of the University of California Davis, and colleagues of 1,278 women ages 16 to 29 treated at five family clinics across northern California, about 20% of women said that their partner tried to coerce them into having a child. The results were reported in the online journal 'Contraception'.

More than half of the women surveyed reported physical or sexual partner violence and a third of those also reported pregnancy coercion or birth control sabotage.

Both pregnancy coercion and birth control sabotage were separately associated with unintended pregnancy, and the two together nearly doubled a woman's odds of unintended pregnancy.

Men wanted their partners to have children for various reasons: to leave a legacy, a desire for attachment, having absolute control over her body, or to make them dependent on their partner. There have been cases where a young mother who has a child with another partner will be forced by her new boyfriend to have another baby with him.

Key strategies include advising women about "invisible" forms of birth control such as injectable and intrauterine contraceptives, as well as easy access to emergency contraception. "If we can identify that reproductive control is going on," Miller said, "we can offer the woman methods for birth control that the partner can't mess with."

Physicians and counsellors should talk about women's empowerment with regard to reproduction during reproductive health visits. We need to have a discussion around whether the girl is feeling ready for sex, rather than just talk about birth control.

The Center for Biological Diversity is distributing free endangered species-themed condoms all over the U.S. to raise awareness about overpopulation's serious impacts on our planet. We hope to spark new conversations about the need to bring Homo sapiens back into balance with the rest of life on Earth.

With 1200 volunteers, including college students, grandmothers, teachers, and clergymen condoms will be handed out at universities, music festivals, spiritual singles groups, and even a science and math teachers' conference.

All the non-Muslim nations that border on the Muslim world will be delighted, since that interface is where many of the armed conflicts are taking place, or have taken place in recent decades. Elsewhere on the website is data that shows armed conflict increases markedly with total fertility rate.

Follow the link to reach this data.

Research has already shown that family planning saves lives and improves maternal and child health, even for a relatively modest investment. It is one of the most cost-effective health interventions in the developing world.

A 37-year-old woman and her children living in the FPMCH program area are healthier and better off than a similar family in the comparison area:

Recently president Obama has decided to escalate the war despite the lack of information about the reality on the ground there. Major General Michael Flynn said that our intelligence officers and analysts cannot answer, quote, "fundamental questions about the environment in which we operate and the people we are trying to protect and persuade." Many say their jobs feel more like "fortune telling."

Greg Mortenson probably knows more about Afghanistan than any other American. He co-authored the book THREE CUPS OF TEA, has become required reading for our senior military commanders and Special Forces in Afghanistan and Mortenson has been enlisted as an unofficial advisor. The book originally had the title "One Man's Mission to Fight Terrorism One School at a Time."

Mortenson started a project that led to the construction of 131 schools in Pakistan and Afghanistan. Mortenson met some former Taliban who, as children, grew up being indoctrinated and were taught to hate. They grew up in very ignorant cultures where they didn't learn about the outside world. His schools hire former Taliban to teach because they got out of the Taliban because their mothers said, "What you're doing is not a good thing. It's not in the name of Islam." These men are willing to go out into the most volatile area and promote education.

The Taliban were originally more ideological, but with less Saudi funding, have turned to crime. People are starting to turn against the Taliban in the last two years. The Taliban is not able to deliver healthcare, education, roads, and the things that most people want, and peace.

When Mortenson was kidnapped by the Taliban in 1996 he won them over when they learned that he was trying to build schools, and they released him and gave him about $300 to build schools.

Mortenson focuses on educating young girls. When the girls become women, they are the ones who promote the value of education in the community. Number one, the infant mortality's reduced. Number two, the population is reduced. The third thing is the quality of health improves.

When girls learn how to read and write, they often teach their mother to do the same. Meat and vegetables are often wrapped in newspaper from which the mother will ask her daughter to read the news and the mother can now learn about what's going on in the outside world. When women are educated, they're not as likely to condone or encourage their son to get into violence or into terrorism. When someone goes on jihad, they usually get permission from their mother.

One example is a young lady who is the first educated female out of 4,000 people in her valley, even though the boys threw stones at her and her high school teachers refused to teach her. She went on for two years of maternal healthcare training. Before she returned to her village, five to 20 women died in childbirth every year, but after her return, as a midwife, not one single woman has died in childbirth. That's just one example. These are just the first fruits of all the seeds that we planted two decades ago but it's been very inspiring to see that happen.

With the Taliban, mullahs keep the people illiterate, and young boys learn how to read the Quran, but they don't learn how to understand Arabic. In Mortenson's schools, they learn to understand Arabic, so that when they read the Quran, they can see there is nothing that says that innocent children and women should be killed. The Quran says that suicide is the worst sin in Islam. The Quran implores all people to have a quest for knowledge. Islamic teachings say, "the ink of a scholar is greater than the blood of a martyr."

Sharia law actually doesn't say that women should be hurt and harmed and marginalized. It doesn't say they should commit suicide. There area very implicit laws in Sharia about the right of land ownership for women. There's implicit laws about treating children, women, with respect. But people are being kept in ignorance of this.

Mortenson's schools are now being built in Taliban areas. They can do this because they work so closely with the elders. Mortenson's people provide the teacher training, materials, and skill labor. But the community has to provide free land, free resources, and the manual labor, so that they become very invested in the school.

When the decision was made to deploy troops, there was no consultation with the with the elders. We've got to start to talk to them and then maybe we could get somewhere.

Afghans have fought for 2,000 years : the Ottomans, Genghis Khan, the Mongols, the Greeks, the Russians, the British, and now the Americans. They have won every battle. Commandant Conway said that no military has ever won a battle here, and, "We are not going to win a battle here either." Admiral Mullen and Petraeus and McChrystal will all tell you to your face there is no military solution in this country. And the solution has got to be a much broader solution.

While it costs a million dollars a year to keep one soldier In Afghanistan, with $1 million, Mortenson's people could build 30 or 40 schools.

Some have recommended pulling out the troops but doing more selected targeted bombings, but the elders say is, please, do not bomb and kill civilians. That is the number one way to antagonize people.

There is hope: The number of children in school has increased ten times in the last decade to 8.5 million children. There's a central banking system in Afghanistan since 2006, which has been huge. There's a road building program, about 80% of the roads have been built now from north to south and east to west. There are 80,000 troops in the Afghan Army trained now. In the district courts the number of women filing titles and deeds for land ownership is skyrocketing.

Mortenson listens to the women who tell him "We don't want our babies to die, and we want our children to go to school."

Seasonal melt has increased about 2.5 days per decade and lasts 3.7 days longer - an average of just under 20 days since 1979.

When the ice melts, darker ocean water absorbs more heat from the sun, and now there is more time for these dark waters to absorb more heat, adding further to ice loss. The delayed fall freeze also means thinner ice reforms every season, leading to increased ice loss in the coming thaw next season.

NASA research shows that average thickness of Arctic sea ice shrank 2.2 feet between the winters of 2004 and 2008, with the surface area covered by multi-year ice shrinking by more than 42%.

The frozen tundra is being replaced by trees and shrubs and the effect of the warmer weather extends all the way down to mid-latitude North America.

Climate change and its further impact on poorly-available Middle East water resources was also discussed, as were increased drought and desertification, scarcity of water resources, increased salinity of groundwater and the spread of pest epidemics and diseases caused by the phenomenon.

Jordanian residents rely on bi-weekly water deliveries to their homes, that fill up tanks located on roofs or in underground wells. Climate change has caused a 30% reduction in Jordan's surface water resources, as well as a decrease in the volume of rainfall and agricultural production, both of which the country and the Arab world heavily rely on.

The three-day meeting was organised by the Arab Administrative Development Organization, and included water experts from Iraq, Jordan, Oman, the Palestinian Authority, Qatar, Saudi Arabia, the United Arab Emirates and Yemen.

Cooperation among all Middle East countries, Arab or not, would be beneficial to curbing major foreseeable problems. NATO, for example, is already working to be the bridge between Jordan and Israel.

The campaign is blessed by near-perfect timing, with Florida on the edge of a depression with plunging home prices, rampant foreclosures and abandoned houses rotting in the heat and dragging down neighborhoods. There are 300,000 empty houses in Florida.

What is more extreme than the build more-more-more mentality? "They had everything they wanted for the last five to six years. They crashed the economy. They have no solution other than bring the bubble back. Hometown Democracy is the only genuine reform on the table that can change the politics of growth once and for all," says Blackner.

Office vacancies are skyrocketing. The state's population is declining for the first time since World War II. Yet there are requests pending to build more than 600,000 more homes, along with millions more square feet of commercial space. There are plans to create massive new cities in the middle of nowhere.

Our development pandemic threatens the economy as much as the environment. Building more houses when the number of buyers has not increased deflates the value of houses that is going to linger for years and years.   Karen Gaia says: sounds like the population bubble has burst in Florida. Time for the "build it, they will come" mentality to be replaced.

1916 - Margaret Sanger organized the first birth control clinic in Brooklyn, N.Y. In 1921 she founded the American Birth Control League which later became the Planned Parenthood Federation of America.

1925 - Sanger's second husband financed the first manufacturing of the diaphragm in the U.S.

1950 - The U.S. population was 150 million.

1954 - The Hugh Moore Fund first used the term "population bomb" on their published pamphlet. He was a philanthropist from Pennsylvania. His mantra was "Your cause is a lost cause unless you support family planning."

1960 - The "pill" was invented and became available to women for contraception.

1965 - Congress passed the Immigration and Nationality Act, ending four decades of restricted immigration. This law, while removing limits based on country of origin, included provisions for family reunification, opening the door to "chain migration."

1965 - The U.S. Supreme Court decision of Buxton and Griswold vs. Conn. legalized birth control for married couples offering "privacy of the bedroom."

1967 - U.S. population reached 200 million.

1968 - The Population Bomb, by Paul R. Ehrlich was published by the Sierra Club. This book laid the foundation for widespread concern about population growth among environmentalists and others that followed in the early years of the 1970's.

1968 - The organization Zero Population Growth (ZPG) was formed. There were dozens of local chapters throughout the country. ZPG later became Population Connection, with a focus on world population.

1970 - Earth Day was declared with population growth a major issue on the agenda. Dr. Mary Steichen Calderon, past medical director of the PPFA, established the Sex, Information and Education Council (SIECUS).

1972 - The Commission on Population and the American Future report, chaired by John D. Rockefeller III, stated "We have looked for, and have not found, any convincing economic argument for continued population growth. The health of our economy does not depend upon it, nor does the vitality of business, nor the welfare of the average person." President Richard Nixon supported this and the National Security Study Memorandum 200 on population, both of which were defeated by Congress.

1972 - The Limits to Growth, is published by the Club of Rome. The book modeled the consequences of a rapidly growing population and finite resource supplies. The book was updated in 1993 and in 2004 under the name Limits to Growth: The 30-Year Update. In 1996 one of the authors, Donella Meadows, founded the Sustainability Institute in Hartland, Vt.

1973 - The U.S. Supreme Court decision Roe vs. Wade affirmed a women's the right to abortion.

The speech will occur on January 8, 2010, having been postponed due to extreme weather conditions in Washington DC. Please follow the headline link or go to www.icpd2015.org for a live streamed broadcast at 3:00 pm. A transcript and video of of the speech will be posted on this site following the event.

The "Cairo Consensus" was reached in 1994 in Cairo, Egypt by 179 nations. It was agreed to achieve universal access to education, especially for girls; reductions in infant, child and maternal mortality, and universal access to reproductive health.

The 1994 ICPD was followed by the 1995 Fourth World Conference on Women which established the Beijing Platform for Action, and the 2000 Millennium Summit, that established the Millennium Development Goals. These three conferences and their reinforcing commitments are the cornerstones of population and development policies globally.

The programs resulting from these conferences have improved and saved millions of lives through effective and affordable reproductive health programs, and has resulted in the growth of economies and preservation of natural resources.

This forecast does not take into account any increase in agricultural production for biofuels, which, by 2030, will require 35 million hectares of land--an area about the size of France and Spain combined.

Barriers to increased food production are rising energy prices, growing depletion of underground aquifers, the continuing loss of farmland to urbanization, and increased drought and flooding resulting from climate change.

It is estimated that $83 billion dollars (in 2009 dollars) would be required to double food production in the developing world by 2050. That is 50% more than current investment levels, and that does not include funds that may be needed to build roads and large scale irrigation projects.

Since food production and distribution has been a major contributor to greenhouse gas emissions, an increase would mean that more severe measures would need to be taken to reduce these emissions.

The large increase in the use of nitrogen fertilizer for the production of crops like corn has dramatically increased the emissions of nitrous oxide, a powerful greenhouse gas, while the world's growing appetite for beef is contributing to a rise in methane emissions. The gasoline and diesel fuel that is consumed by tractors and trucks is also a large source of carbon emissions.

The number of people in the world who are chronically hungry reached one billion mark in 2009, with 642 million in Asia and the Pacific, 265 million in sub-Saharan Africa, 53 million in Latin America and the Caribbean, and 42 million in the Near East and North Africa. This means that one in seven are chronically hungry.

In addition to population growth, the sharp hike in grain prices that set off riots in many countries in 2008, and reduced remittances sent back home from immigrants left unemployed by the global recession are reasons given for the increase in global hunger. The FAO estimates that the current economic crisis has forced 105 million more people into hunger.

Donor countries are urged to increase agriculture's share of official development assistance from 5% to 17%.

All those Africans will face problems with urbanisation, economic growth, health and climate problems.

Some say the large numbers will impact availability of food, jobs, schools, housing and healthcare. But others say Africa has opportunity to reach the economic growth of billion-strong China and India, with its large bulge of youth who could become a workforce in the marketplace, if we "focus focus on education and training." In 2050 the continent is expected to have 349 million people aged 15-24, or 29% of the world's total. This could pay off as a "demographic dividend" of people of working age. Africa has the fastest economic growth this year outside China and India. Mo Ibrahim, a Sudanese-born British entrepreneur said: "Africa is underpopulated. We have 20% of the world's landmass and 13% of its population."

African's rate of urbanisation is the fastest the world today. Most Africans born today will live in a "mega-city" and will see deaths from smoking or car crashes as well as the more familiar issues of malnutrition, malaria and AIDs, as well as an increase in droughts, floods and desertification caused by climate change. Also child mortality is still high.

In 27 years, Africa's population has doubled. Nigeria and Uganda are the two fastest growing. In 1950 there were two Europeans for every African, but by 2050 there will be two Africans for every European.

While the average woman worldwide has 2.6 children, in sub-Saharan Africa the figure is 5.3. The world's highest fertility rate is in Niger, where women have on average 7.4 children. Globally 62% of married women of childbearing age use contraception, but in Africa the figure is 28%.

Under-development, poverty and sometimes limited education or resources means that women's access to reproductive health services is limited.

Population growth could pile more pressure on scarce resources and hinder development. A report by the UNFPA says: "Twenty years of almost 3% annual population growth has outpaced economic gains, leaving Africans, on average, 22% poorer than they were in the mid-1970s." The International Food Policy Research Institute predicts that an additional 15 million children will be malnourished.   Karen Gaia says: the big difference between China and Africa is that China started curbing its population growth many years ago. Africa has barely started. India is way ahead of Africa in this area as well. Youth bulges can work but they cannot go on perpetually.

A child aged 14-16 could, subject to certain requirements, be regarded as capable of consenting to healthcare provided he or she had the capacity to understand the nature and consequences of the treatment.

The requirements include that the medical practitioner should encourage the child to inform his or her parents or guardians.

In the case of children aged 12-14, treatment should be available at their request, but it would be mandatory for the medical practitioner to notify the child's parents.

A 2007 study of elementary and middle school students, mandated by Congress, found that students who received abstinence instruction were just as likely to have sex in the following year as students who did not get such instruction. Most of the nation's recent progress in reducing the abortion rate has occurred in states that have shown a commitment to real sex education.

The new $114 million initiative will be administered by a newly created Office of Adolescent Health with a mandate to support "medically accurate and age appropriate programs" shown to reduce teenage pregnancy.

The spending bill also increases financing for family-planning services for low-income women and lifts a ban on the District of Columbia's use of its own tax dollars to pay for abortion services for poor women except in cases when a woman's life is at risk, or the pregnancy is the result of rape or incest.

Unfortunately, the health care reform bill approved by the Senate Finance Committee includes an amendment that would revive a separate $50 million grant-making program for abstinence-only programs run by states. Hopefully this amendment will be stricken.

Emphasizing the importance of this type of integration are the facts that: 1) 200 million women in the world have an unmet need for contraception to prevent an unintended pregnancy, 2) more than 80% of new HIV infections are sexually transmitted, 3) despite a massive increase in resources devoted to fighting HIV/AIDS, only a negligible reduction in new HIV infections has been achieved.

Socially marginalized people and adolescents are impeded from accessing HIV prevention, care and treatment by the stigma against AIDS and discrimination. Illiterate, socially restricted women and girls have severely limited opportunities to learn how to protect themselves. Gender inequality and stigma against AIDS are the leading factors contributing to HIV risk, according to UNAIDs.

Integrating services means fewer trips to a clinic, less expense, and fewer missed opportunities for health care when it is necessary for a woman to address two or more health issues at a time. When girls and women are able to spend their time earning income, studying, caring for their children and families, or participating in community life, the economic sector as well as households benefit.

Integration also avoids the stigma associated with HIV and STD clinics because the testing and counseling is part of routine care. But over a decade after integration of HIV and reproductive health services was proposed, widespread integration remain an unrealized goal.

Quality services for family planning or HIV allow sexually active individuals to make safe and responsible decisions about their intimate lives. Education is more comprehensive when HIV prevention is discussed in the context of maternal health and family planning services, and knowing about family planning and contraceptives when a woman seeks HIV services allows her to exercise her rights to plan and space her births, to conceive more safely if she chooses to become pregnant, and to negotiate safer sex with a partner.

Tens of millions of women want to delay their next pregnancy for at least two years or stop having children altogether, but are not using a modern method of contraception. Women with an unmet need for contraception also need information on how to avoid contracting HIV. Women represent nearly half of the 33 million people living with HIV, and several studies suggest that a majority of them also have an unmet need for family planning.

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