Tuesday, July 22, 2008

Editorial: The global war on sex education

by Sarah Wildman

According to a new World Bank report, despite a worldwide increase in access to contraception and contraceptive technologies, some 51 million unintended pregnancies take place every year in the developing world, and an additional 25 million pregnancies are gestated by women who use faulty contraception or don't understand the methods they're using.

Of that number, according to the World Bank, some 68,000 women die from botched or unsafe abortions each year, and some 5.1 million are left permanently disabled by them. "Giving women access to modern contraception and family planning also helps to boost economic growth while reducing high birth rates so strongly linked with endemic poverty, poor education and high numbers of maternal and infant deaths," Joy Phumaphi, the World Bank's vice-president for human development, and a former health minister in Botswana, said in a statement.

More HERE.

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