The Guardian - Breaking down barriers to birth control (round table discussion in the UK)

How can family planning help reduce the number of maternal deaths in developing countries? A Guardian roundtable debates the key issues

In the UK, the rules are clear: if you don't want to get pregnant, contraception should be available free of charge. Other factors may stop some women and girls using it, but the basic provision is there. Elsewhere, the picture is very different. More than 200 million women worldwide want to use contraceptives but simply cannot access them.

The consequences are stark: each year there are 75m unintended pregnancies in developing countries. That exposes more women and girls to the associated risks in a world where more than a third of a million die in pregnancy or childbirth annually – the number one killer of 15- to 19-year-olds.

And having babies when they are still children themselves – nearly 13 million adolescents do so each year – means girls have to drop out of school, missing out on the education that would give them the opportunity to escape poverty.

A high-profile summit in London Wednesday, co-hosted by the Department for International Development and the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, will use the message that family planning saves lives to seek donor pledges large enough to give 120 million more women access to contraceptives by 2020. But what else is necessary alongside that all-important funding? Where is change needed most urgently and how can it be achieved? And what are the potential pitfalls?

more: http://www.guardian.co.uk/society/2012/jul/11/sexual-health-roundtable?newsfeed=true