Melinda Gates
Funding for contraceptives helps build a more stable and prosperous world
Cuts to funding for contraceptives hurt millions worldwide
Last week, just a few days after the White House proposed dramatic cuts to health and development aid, I headed to Indonesia. The timing was coincidental, but the reason I was going happened to be especially relevant.
Indonesia has strategically used foreign aid to transform itself from a poor nation into a middle-income one. I was there to talk about the role that investments in contraceptives have played in the transformation.
After Bill and I started our foundation and I began spending time in developing countries, women kept telling me about their unmet need for family planning. When I started looking at the data, I learned that contraceptives are one of the greatest anti-poverty innovations the world has ever seen.
Five decades ago, fewer than one in 10 Indonesian women were using family planning tools. The average woman had five or six children, and she was raising them in extreme poverty.
With support from donor nations like America, Indonesia implemented a family planning program. In just one generation, access to contraceptives skyrocketed to over 50%. Most women decided to have just two or three children. More of those children were able to stay longer in school, more women were able to work, and prospects for families across the country began to improve.
8TH LARGEST ECONOMY
Today, Indonesia is the eighth largest economy and one of our biggest trading partners. It is a steady ally in an unstable world and an important market for U.S. goods. And as more Indonesian children have grown up healthy and well-educated, the world has gained millions of minds that can drive progress for everyone.
Our foreign aid investments there have paid dividends.
When Indonesia completes its economic transformation, it will be in no small part due to the efforts of health workers, midwives and community volunteers — almost all of them women, almost all of them people of faith — who are pioneering ways to get more women the tools and information they need to plan their families.
Just outside the provincial capital of Yogyakarta, I toured a hospital with Ivanna Beru Brahmana, an obstetrician and gynecologist who is passionate about counseling families about contraceptives because she wants each child she delivers to have the best possible start in life.
Like many of the people I talked to, she believes that part of being a good Muslim is being a good parent, and that part of being a good parent is spacing pregnancies so parents are able to devote time and resources to each one of their children.
I also sat down with a woman named Suparti, who like many Indonesians goes by only her first name. She is a community volunteer who uses an interactive etablet to educate women about contraceptives and combat misinformation.
Concerned that some women in her community might still be falling through the cracks, Suparti persuaded a local religious leader to incorporate family planning lessons into the prayer meetings he leads, to help meet women where they are.
And I’m still thinking about the high school student who said she plans to use contraceptives in her future because of something her parents told her: “This is a developing country. It’s your job to develop it.”
Like so many of the Indonesians I met, she is not merely hopeful her country will continue to rise — she is determined to do her part to lift it. Foreign aid helps make sure that more young people have that chance.
As the debate over cutting funding for development assistance continues, we will be asked whether we believe that investing in developing countries and the women and girls who live there is worth it. I hope you will insist that it is. WHAT’S AT STAKE And as the White House implements the Mexico City policy, which prohibits U.S. aid from supporting international groups that promote abortion, and considers cuts to things such as foreign aid, I hope that you will speak up loud and clear for the power of contraceptives to transform nations and build a better world for all of us — and that you will keep the image of the Indonesians who are carrying out this work in your mind and in your heart.
Indonesia is only one of many countries whose future will be impacted by the funding decisions the U.S. makes. Its story is a reminder both of what is possible and what is at stake. With so much achieved already, now is not the time to turn our backs.
At home and overseas, there are people depending on us.