Reproductive rights, family planning: a cornerstone of control.

Over the past three decades, the increasing availability of safer methods of modern contraception has permitted greater individual choice in matters of reproduction throughout much of the world, resulting in improved health for mothers and children, as well as reduced fertility rates.

Today, about 5 5 per cent of couples in developing regions use some method of family planning, representing a fivefold increase since the 1960s. Consequently, the total fertility rate there has declined from 6.1 children per woman in the 1950s to 3.7 in the 1990s.

However, the full range of modern family-planning methods still remains unavailable to at least 3 50 million couples worldwide. Survey data suggest that some 120 million additional women would be currently using a modern method if more accurate information and affordable services were easily available, and if husbands, extended family and the community were more supportive.

Guaranteeing the exercise of the right to reproductive heath and family planning for all individuals and couples is a major focus of the 1994 International Conference on Population and Development. The Conference will consider ways to broaden access to a wide range of modern, safe and effective contraceptive methods and related information.

The aim of family planning programmes, according to the Conference's draft programme of a ion, must be to enable couples individuals to decide f responsibly on the number and spacing of their children, and make available a full range of safe and effective family-planning methods.

Rather than imposing specific incentives or disincentives to lower or raise fertility, the draft states that Governments should make it easier for individuals and couples to take responsibility for their own reproductive health by removing unnecessary legal, medical, clinical and regulatory barriers to information and access to family-planning methods.

The goal of public and private family-planning organizations should be to remove all programme-related barriers to family-planning use by the year 2005 through the redesign...