C T Online Desk: The United Nations Population Fund (UNFPA) has launched the State of World Population (SWOP) Report 2022. The flagship report focuses on the issue of “Unintended Pregnancy”, at a time when nearly 121 million pregnancies globally are unintended, and among which 60% end up in abortion. UNFPA Country Representative Eiko Narita had an exclusive interview with Dhaka Tribune on the occasion of the report launching.
Why was the issue of unintended pregnancy focused on this issue?
We consider this matter a crisis; it’s something that we need to act on. Unwanted pregnancy is a consequence of a number of unmet needs that a woman should be able to access to ensure a safe family planning. Our motto is, every pregnancy has to be planned, regardless of any context. This is not just an issue of family planning but rather a human rights issue which can hamper the development of a country like Bangladesh.
Is unintended always considered a bad move regarding family planning?
No, definitely not. Just because some babies are unintended doesn’t mean they are unwelcome. Many unintended pregnancies are met with joy, many of them are deeply loved. Yet while celebrating fortunate outcomes, we must also acknowledge the denial of voice that gave rise to the pregnancies to begin with.
What is the situation of Bangladesh regarding unintended pregnancies?
Bangladesh has improved in many family planning indicators in the past few decades. For instance, in 1993-94, almost a quarter of females were unable to access family planning services and that has gone down to 12% today – that’s a significant achievement. In the last three decades, a tremendous degree of success was achieved in various social indicators, including sexual reproductive health, maternal mortality rate, child mortality and child marriage. However, we have started witnessing a stagnation over these successes in the last five years. In the last five years, the child marriage rate has decreased only by 1% and we are really at a point where we might actually be reversing the gains. And child marriage has a significant contribution in unintended pregnancies as 5 out of 10 child brides become pregnant before the age of 18. Right now, every 59 pregnancies out of 1000 pregnancies are unintended.
How does this issue tend to have an impact on gender equality?
About 15.5% of all adolescents of Bangladesh don’t have their family planning needs met and so those pregnancies tend to be unintended pregnancies. Additionally, gender based violence, access to sexual reproductive health measures, lack of sex education play a great role in women empowerment. And, as a cumulative effect of all these factors, women can be subjected to unintended pregnancies. And when a pregnancy is unwanted or unplanned it can result in worsened health, lost education, lost income and increase in family hardship for women.
So what are the changes in policy level that should be adopted to address the issue because the discourse is not very commonly discussed in the country?
Well, we have been saying for a long time that Bangladesh really needs to work on the issue of child marriage; it has no alternative. With such development of the country, the issue of child marriage or gender based violence hasn’t decreased. It’s because the issues have become far more complex with the dynamic changes in society. If we really want to change this situation, we have to go into the root of this problem and adopt new solutions. Secondly, the loopholes of the child marriage law need to reviewed to make it impactful. We must look into the issue of gender-based violence since it has increased drastically during Covid. We need to make help available to victims in the form of hotline calling, remote counseling, telemedicine free of any charges.
From the UNFPA perspective, we also think there is a linkage between climate change and the risk of unintended pregnancy,\ because it exposes women to unsafe situations while dealing through a crisis.
What is your stand on abortion since 30% of all pregnancies end up in abortion?
This report is not entirely about abortion but it touches the surface of it. We see abortion as a direct consequence of unintended pregnancy. That is why we emphasize aspects of “family planning” so hugely. This is because, ultimately, the decision of having a child has to be the decision of a couple, not just the husband. It’s a 50-50 agreement and the woman has to have equal consent over this.
