In fact, the latest “State of World Population” report by UNFPA dealt with the issue of unintended pregnancy and covered the circumstances under which lack of access can be lethal, literally, in the sense that women lose their lives. We also featured, as I mentioned earlier, that the woman who dies during many of these occurrences is not a woman at all. She is an adolescent girl who, whether through ignorance or through lack of access, or sometimes through coercion, became pregnant and there was no support.
I also believe in the link in terms of the empowerment of women to be able to fulfill their aspirations, whether that is through employment or entrepreneurship, or through motherhood. The intention makes a lot of difference, and the ability to plan your life is going to be more and more acutely necessary in a rapidly evolving technological world.
The fact is that contraception has been proven to be not only life-saving but also very cost-effective in terms of the value returned in community productivity and economic productivity. For me, the real value is that an educated girl has an unlimited wealth of opportunities in front of her, and a girl who lacks an education is not only condemned to poverty herself, but the next generations also have been shown, by data, to fare worse.
The empowerment terminology mustn't disguise that we are actually talking about individuals who would like to conduct their lives in ways that make things better for themselves, for their communities and additively for countries and the planet.