Family Planning

Right up until the 20^th century, people, especially women, could only rely on luck or prayers when it came to family planning. People who wanted children couldn’t always have them. People who didn’t want too many children or wanted to have children further apart couldn’t do anything to accomplish this. The only reliable method for birth control was abstinence, a method that didn’t appeal to everyone. Now, however, many different family planning methods are available and this availability has made significant changes to people’s lives.

Family planning affects many different aspects of someone’s life, the two major ones being finances and health. First of all, thanks to family planning methods, couples can decide when they are in a financial position to have children. This becomes important when one considers the cost of healthcare during a pregnancy and then the costs of bringing up the children including food, shelter, clothing and education.

Birth control allows couples to decide when they are ready to bear these costs. Second, planning children properly spaced apart helps women’s health. As per the USAID or the United States Agency for International Development, if a mother has children spaced less than two years apart or more than five years apart, both the mother’s and the child’s health can be impacted.

Family planning isn’t important only for individual families, it is also important for countries and for the world. One of the biggest problems we face today is overpopulation. We have a global population that far exceeds the resources that are available to us. Family planning helps to bring down the growth rate of the population so that the burden on our resources, if not exactly eased, is at least not increased. China’s one-child policy and India’s two-child policy are examples of countries that are overpopulated using family planning methods to control their populations.

While most people often use birth control and family planning synonymously, the fact is that family planning is far more than merely preventing conception. It is the best way for couples to chart their future, for women to control their own bodies and for countries to control population growth. Many may disagree on religious or moral grounds but the fact remains that family planning is an absolute necessity in the 21^st century