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> BETSY: I'd like to take the opportunity to introduce the next speaker, Anne Hendrixson
who is my colleague, assistant director of PopDev, who is a Hampshire alum who worked
with CLPP and PopDev 12 years ago and it is so wonderful to have her back.
I can't tell you how wonderful it is, thank you.
>> ANNE: Hi everybody.
It's an honor to be here and it's a great honor to be a part of PopDev and CLPP.
As a long time feminist advocate for population politics, it's ironic for me
that each year I celebrate my birthday on July 11: World Population Day.
Yeah it really takes the shine off the tiara.
And last year on my birthday, all the major international
reproductive health organizations and donors came together in London.
They were not there to celebrate my birthday. They were there --
They were hosting the 2012 London Family Planning Summit.
Where they rolled out a $4.3 billion family planning strategy.
This strategy is focused on voluntary fertility control.
Its main goal is to reach 380 million women in the Global South
with contraceptives by 2020, abortions excluded because major donor Melinda Gates is anti-choice.
Melinda Gates hails this as the biggest investment in women in history.
(Pause)
>> ANNE: But this investment in women wasn't made on International Women's Day.
It was made on World Population Day, and this is telling.
Is this so-called - what people are calling the "rebirth of family planning" --
Is it an investment in women?
Or is it a reinvestment in the retrograde population control thinking?
By focusing on women and fertility on World Population Day,
the summit revived notions that poor women of color in
the Global South are victims of their own fertility and the reason for population growth.
This entrenches gender norms, racial stereotypes, and global power divides.
It reinforces retro ideas that population growth and therefore women of color
are the reason for poverty.
This rebirth of family planning is not a win for reproductive justice.
It is cause for deep concern.
An influx of hormonal contraceptives into Southern Africa and South Asia
will not safeguard people's reproductive health and freedom.
With number driven targets aimed at women of color, lack of safe abortion
and a limited menu of contraceptive options
it may be the rebirth of population control.
Not that population control has gone away. Population control abuses happen today--
Like forced and coerced sterilization and abortion
and the sterilization for *** positive women in parts of Africa and Latin America
and the 2-child norm in states in India.
>> ANNE: An anticipation of a right wing backlash against this limited family planning agenda
the Gates Foundation rolled out a website "no-controversy.com."
When I first read the site it read "no controversy in contraceptives."
The argument seems to be that if I agree with contraception access, which I do
I'll agree with the Gates agenda, which I firmly and passionately don't.
So to the Gates Foundation I say, yes controversy. Controversy for safer contraceptives.
Controversy for freedom from coercion and forced sterilization.
>> ANNE: Controversy to hold international donors and
organizations accountable to what they do.
Controversy to end unethical contraception testing on human subjects.
>> ANNE: And controversy to build an inclusive and righteous reproductive justice movement.
(Clapping, cheering)