The great majority of women want to control their own fertility. Growing contraceptive use in nearly every developing country attests to women's desire to plan their pregnancies. Many other women want to space or limit births but are not using contraception. The continuing high number of abortions, often undertaken illegally at great risk, also testifies to women's desire to control their own fertility.

How can reproductive choice improve a woman's life? Making choices about the course of one's own life asserts a person's fundamental dignity. Thus family planning is a basic human right, although many women are unable to exercise that right. Also, the woman who chooses when she has children, and how many, exerts an important measure of control over her own physical, emotional, and economic well-being. She contributes to her children's well-being too.

Health. More than half a million women die each year from causes related to pregnancy. Many of these deaths follow unwanted pregnancies: 20% to 40% result from unsafe abortions. For women who want to avoid pregnancy, using contraception means avoiding the risks of pregnancy and childbirth or of unsafe abortion.

Planning. By determining when she will have children and how many, a woman takes a step toward deciding how she will spend much of her life—whether to finish school, to give more attention to each child she has, to better manage household duties, possibly to earn income so that she and her family can live more prosperous lives, or even to contribute more to her community and society as a whole. Internationally comparable surveys find that, in countries where levels of contraceptive use are above average, women start childbearing later, end childbearing sooner, have fewer children, and spend fewer years caring for young children. Of course, a woman's decision to control her fertility does not guarantee her new opportunities. It does, however, help enable her to take advantage of opportunities that present themselves and to provide new resources to the family.

• Show by example that women should be treated with dignity: their opinions, valued; and their decisions, respected;
• Provide additional contraceptive and other reproductive health services that can meet common and serious needs—possibly care for sexually transmitted diseases and information and services for young people, for example;
• Influence public perceptions of women's roles by depicting in the mass media women who act with courage, take responsibility, and succeed in new roles;
• Encourage men to understand their own and women's reproductive health needs, share reproductive decision making, and take more responsibility for reproductive health, contraceptive use, and their families' welfare; and
• Employ women as family planning professionals, treat them equitably, and offer them opportuni- ties to lead.