Family planning as tool for population control

The governing council of the United Nations, in 1989, recommended July 11 as the World Population Day, having discovered that population increase has become an issue of serious concern to the entire world. The world population has been growing on daily basis against the carrying capacity of the earth’s resources.

Nigeria’s population is 195,300,343 currently while the total world population now is 7,485,254,719 and 83 million people is added on yearly basis.  The United Nations General Assembly, by resolution 45/216 of December 21, 1990, supported and continues with the world population day activities and links population with environment and development.

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The theme of this year is, “Family planning as human right” because parents have the right to decide on the number of children they want and plan on how they want them. The Teheran Proclamation stated that parents have a basic human right to determine, freely and responsibly, the number and spacing of their children. Family planning is a birth control method of preventing unwanted pregnancies and for the womenfolk to stay in good health, so that they can take care of their families to enable them contribute to national development.

Through safe family planning, unwanted pregnancies are averted. There are strict laws on abortion, with stigma, while some women die as a result of it, and the society frowns on it. Lack of access to contraception and sex education causes most adolescent girls in developing countries to practise unsafe sex. Populationexplosion in the world is as a result of unwanted pregnancies.

Planned parenthood will help mothers to be educated enough to be able to train and nurture their children to become successful, responsible adults in the society. Family planning is about investing in the health of the people to yield economic and other gains that can bring about development, especially the 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development.  Family planning programme will help to avert sexually transmitted diseases, and help families to have supportive environment, through social and legal frameworks.

Population size has impact on development. Development is about reorganisation, and reorientation of the entire economic and social system. There has been imbalance between population and the means of subsistence, which has influence on socio-economic development of the society. When population grows beyond socio-economic limits, it manifests social problems of perpetual poverty, child labour, school dropouts, malnutrition, slums, and communicable diseases.

If population continues to grow unchecked, it will not be sustained by the limited available resources.  With the present population of Nigeria, so many people do not have access to food, shelter, clothes, education, income and quality life.  Government cannot provide everything and that is the reason parents need empowerment to be able to sustain themselves and families.

Therefore, access to safe, voluntary family planning is central to gender equality, women’s empowerment and poverty reduction.  Women will have time to contribute to the society economically by having access to productive resources and education, while domestic violence will reduce.

In conclusion, to achieve this goal of having efficient control of family units, society and nation, there is a call to government, non-governmental organisation, civil societies, religious leaders, and planners to put in place sound arrangement parents to embrace family planning so that they are able to control population growth at their own levels.

Fashona, Esther Folake Ph.D.,

Ibadan