http://www.tompaine.com/feature2.cfm/ID/5458All the countries that produce or sponsor what the West calls terrorists are characterized by high fertility and the low status of women. This is as true for the Palestinian territories as it is for Afghanistan, just as it holds true for the conflict-prone regions in Africa. A high birth rate does three things that make war and terrorism more likely.
In Bangladesh, the public and private sectors worked together to get pills and condoms got into every village. Safe, early abortion became widely available. The birth rate plummeted. When I first went to the area in 1968 families had six children; today they average 3.3. In one rural area of over 600,000 where Dr. Zafrullah Chowdhury has been working to train village women to provide medical services and help the community, family size now averages just over two; exactly the same as in the United States. This is a country where people live on a dollar a day, where three quarters of the women are illiterate and where a tragic one in 15 children die in the first year of life, but family choices have become widely available.
Despite these social and economic deprivations, Bangladesh is a more stable, less violent country than Pakistan. In Pakistan we have seen the opposite story. The government family-planning services were badly organized and the private sector was not encouraged. Everybody knew that abortions were common, but only a few were honest enough to admit it. The birth rate remained high and the population is exploding. Karachi is a violent, gang-ridden city.
Pakistan is only slightly larger than Texas, and in another 25 years it will have almost as many people in it as live in the entire United States. It is likely to become more and more unstable. The United States spends a billion dollars a day on 'defense.' Family planning is another form of defense, and it just happens to be one other people want as well. We should be spending a billion dollars a year on international family planning. If we did, it would do a great deal to create more pluralistic societies, with more opportunities for women and youth. In short, it would help to bring long-term peace and stability to our planet.
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