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This article provides information about how the women’s status is affected by the state policy of population control:
Islam does not prohibit family planning. Several ‘Ulemas’ of different countries in fact have already issued ‘fatwas’ saying that all temporary forms of family planning for medical and economic reasons are permitted. In Islamic countries like Turkey and Indonesia, for instance, family planning methods are quite popular.
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In Turkey, 63% of the population uses contraception and in Indonesia the figure stands at 48%. Another factor that needs to be discussed alongside the issue of overpopulation is the simultaneous prevalence of high rate of infant mortality and fertility in developing countries. An analysis of the reasons reveals structural factors for the same.
The low status of women, lack of proper nutrition and personal health emerge as common reasons for high rates of infant mortality. Infant mortality only registers death of children in the first year of birth, while many of the children who do survive j beyond the first year die due to lack of proper nutrition and care.
In a system dominated by patriarchal values, which attaches greater value to a male child and recognises women primarily by their reproductive functions, the motivation for having many children is structural. In such a situation, women either lack the power to decide whether to have a child or not, or exercise their reproductive role in order to fine acceptance in the system.
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Contraceptives or other techniques of birth control have been misused to control women’s fertility. Thu R instead of providing women greater control over their reproductive functions, birth control techniques has provided a means of controlling women’s bodies. The proliferation of illegal and private sex determination clinics all over India is the case in point. Female infanticide and termination of pregnancy to avoid having a girl child is a common practice.
Similarly, in China, the resurgence of female infanticide and abandonment of children in the early 1980s was attributed to the pressure created by government’s family planning programme. The fear is that the drop in the number in females will lead to other forms of exploitative practices against women such as revival of infant betrothal and new forms of sexual and economic slavery.
There is also a controversy over the politics of technology transfers from the first to the developing world. The concern about population, and now HIV/ AIDS, has also been viewed as a circuitous means of creating a market, or rather a “dumping ground” for many of the obsolete technologies, of the first world in the developing world.
In such a scenario, is it good enough to control birth and bring down the population? Is it not important to address the ethical issues surrounding birth control technologies and the overdrive to check overpopulation without dealing with the larger structural dimensions of the problem? In order for family planning techniques and birth control measures to be meaningful, social and economic conditions of women have to be improved. By concentrating on women’s reproductive roles, women’s productive lives are not considered in comprehending their compulsions and the reproductive choices that they make.