Support Reproductive Rights Worldwide. Pass Global Sexual and Reproductive Health Act of 2011.

Urge the United States House of Representatives, the United States Senate, and President Obama to pass the Global Sexual and Reproductive Health Act of 2011 (H.R.1319).

About the Global Sexual and Reproductive Health Act

The Global Sexual and Reproductive Health Act of 2011 (H.R.1319), sponsored by U.S. Rep. Yvette  D. Clarke (D NY-11), is a bill that would promote the sexual and reproductive health of individuals and couples in developing countries.  In addition, the Global Sexual and Reproductive Health Act would strengthen and expand the U.S. foreign assistance and our global leadership in health, and the U.S. government's current program on international family planning and reproductive health into a more comprehensive sexual and reproductive health programs.

The Global Sexual and Reproductive Health Act touches upon all aspects of family planning and reproductive health, from sex education, to maternal care, to birth control, to STI and HIV prevention, as well as encouraging the abandonment of female genital mutilation, and reducing incidences of unsafe abortion.  It also would promote linkages between sexual and reproductive health services, child health, malaria, and neglected tropical diseases.  

The Problem

An estimated 215,000,000 women in developing countries have an unmet need for effective, and modern contraceptives. 

Throughout much of the world, the lack of access of women, particularly poor women, to basic reproductive health services and information contributes to death and suffering among women and their families. 

Effects on Sexual Transmitted Diseases

According to the World Health Organization (WHO), aspects of sexual and reproductive health, including maternal mortality and morbidity, reproductive cancers, and sexually transmitted infections (STIs), including HIV, account for nearly 20 percent of the global burden of ill-health for women and some 14 percent for men.

Also, the WHO has identified unsafe sex as the second most important risk factor for disability and death among young people in the world's poorest communities. Forty-five percent of all new HIV infections occur among young people.

Effects on Pregnancy, Childbirth, Maternal Deaths, and Abortion

Complications due to pregnancy and childbirth are the leading cause of death among women ages 15 to 19. Each year, an estimated 550,000 women worldwide die from complications related to pregnancy, childbirth, or unsafe abortion. Another 50,000,000 women annually suffer long-term illness or permanent physical impairment from such causes.

Unsafe abortion accounts for 13 percent of maternal deaths worldwide. More than half of abortions (55 percent) in the developing world are unsafe. Of the 19,000,000 unsafe abortions that take place each year, most occur in the developing world. Around 70,000 women die and millions more suffer serious injuries from the complications of unsafely performed abortions.

Effects on Poverty

The lack of access of women, particularly poor women, to basic reproductive health services, undermines women's struggle for self-determination, and corrupts the efforts of families to lift themselves out of the poverty in which over a billion of the world's people live.

Effects on Early Marriage and FGM

Also, practices like early marriage, female genital mutilation, and early sexual debut adversely impact the sexual and reproductive health of young people in many developing countries, and strong barriers exist to providing the information, services, and other forms of support that young people need to lead healthy sexual and reproductive lives. 

The Solution

Providing modern contraceptives to fill the unmet need of modern contraceptives would avert an estimated 53,000,000 unintended pregnancies each year, thereby preventing 150,000 women from dying of pregnancy-related complications, 600,000 children from losing their mothers, and 25,000,000 induced abortions.

Sexual and reproductive health programs can empower women to make informed decisions and better control their lives, and by engaging men and boys in taking responsibility for the sexual and reproductive health of their partners, can contribute to greater gender equality.

By allowing individuals and couples to choose the number and timing of their children, reproductive health care gives families and individuals greater control over their economic resources.

Access to sexual and reproductive health services, including family planning, has a direct and important impact on infant and child mortality. By allowing women to choose the timing, number, and spacing of their pregnancies, high-risk births are averted, and the children that are born have a greater chance of surviving to adulthood.

Also, integrating reproductive health services, including family planning, with HIV prevention programs, such as those for voluntary counseling and testing and prevention of mother-to-child transmission, is essential to effectively combating HIV/AIDS and other STIs.

Increasing access to sexual and reproductive health could significantly decrease pregnancy-related mortality and morbidity by reducing the number of pregnancies that place women at increased risk of experiencing such complications.

Death and injury from unsafe abortion is greatly reduced where abortion is legal for a broad range of indications and where safe abortion is accessible.

School-based education and family planning play an interrelated role in lifting the status of women. Delaying sexual debut, along with contraceptive use among young women already sexually active, lowers the likelihood that young women will leave their schooling due to pregnancy, and education increases the chances that young women will delay the age at which they marry and give birth.

Meeting the need for family planning services and pregnancy-related care, by doubling the current global investment for both, would reduce maternal mortality by 70 percent and deaths to newborns by 44 percent. These goals can be achieved for $1,500,000,000 less than the cost of achieving maternal and newborn health alone. Every dollar invested in family planning saves $1.40 in maternal and newborn health care services.

Now is the time to shore up the United States political and financial commitment in order to satisfy the large unmet need for these services, thereby helping to improve women's sexual and reproductive health worldwide.

What would the Global Sexual and Reproductive Health Act do?

Under the  Global Sexual and Reproductive Health Act, it would authorize the President to provide assistance to:

- (1) support the achievement of universal access to sexual and reproductive health in developing countries and to ensure that individuals and couples can freely and responsibly determine the number, timing, and spacing of their children and have the means to do so;

-(2) reduce the incidence of unsafe abortion in developing countries and provide care for women experiencing injury or illness from complications of unsafe abortion;

-(3) ensure that sexual and reproductive health services are provided in developing countries at every phase of a humanitarian emergency; and

-(4) ensure access to sexual and reproductive health care for young people in developing countries.

It would also direct the President to implement a strategy to improve and create linkages among the various components of sexual and reproductive health to ensure that individual men and women are provided with a continuum of appropriate sexual and reproductive health services.

States that assistance under this Act shall:

-(1) promote coordination between and among donors, the private sector, nongovernmental and civil society organizations, and governments in order to support sexual and reproductive health programs in developing countries; and

-(2) be used for the conduct of formative research and to monitor and evaluate program effectiveness.

What you can do to help pass the Global Sexual and Reproductive Health Act?

Please write to and/or call your U.S. Representatives and Senators and President Obama tell them to pass the Global Sexual and Reproductive Health Act of 2011 (H.R.1319). Also ask your U.S. Representatives and Senators to co-sponsor the Global Sexual and Reproductive Health Act .

Also people sign the petition to pass the Global Sexual and Reproductive Health Act

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