Dealing with world population concerns | Christian Colombo, Joanna Onions

‘Are there too many people in the world? Or too few? Is the population growing too fast — or too slow?’

In a long and detailed recent report, the UN Population Fund, its sexual and reproductive health agency, discusses the facts, and alarmist concerns, about population growth.

Very much in line with humanist ideals of personal flourishing, agency and autonomy, the report says that, rather than the questions above, we should be asking: ‘How many pregnancies are wanted?’; and ‘How many wish for pregnancies but are not supported/allowed to fulfil such desires?’

Unwanted pregnancies

The numbers in this regard are far from what one would wish.

Data from 68 countries highlights the impact on women and girls of the absence of their bodily autonomy. 44% of partnered women and girls are denied their fundamental right to make their own decisions. 24% are unable to say no to sex, 25% to make decisions about their own health care, and 11% to make decisions about contraception.

Together, this means that only 56% of women are able make their own decisions over their sexual and reproductive health and rights. It is thus estimated that nearly half of all pregnancies are unintended, mistimed or unwanted.

Wanted pregnancies

Turning to the second question, the report notes that many struggle with an unfulfilled desire for children due to economic and financial insecurity, but also because: “Globally, infertility is seldom prioritized, even though it is commonplace and its impacts on individuals and families can be devastating… ‘family planning’… is often used as a synonym for contraception, when… it should be inclusive of all aspects of reproductive planning, including interventions that help individuals and couples realize their desire for children.”

The report goes on to say that same-sex and gender-diverse couples are “particularly impacted by laws regulating whether and how people can become parents”. It outlines that only 54 countries allow same-sex couples to adopt children and many countries permit in-vitro fertilization only for married couples. Furthermore, only 24 countries allow same sex marriage and transgender and non-binary persons may face particular barriers in that only one third of countries make it possible to change legal gender. Even in countries where persons can exercise this right, care for their reproductive and sexual needs lags far behind.

It is a welcome development that, in Malta, free IVF is available to same-sex couples and single women.

Contraception in Malta

Many of us will be aware from our family histories that family sizes in Malta have reduced drastically in the past decades. Before they knew about, or were able to implement, family planning, our great-grandmothers often bore 10, if not 20, children, with the consequence that most of their lives were wholly devoted to child-rearing rather than to any kind of personal development, let alone a career.

Sadly, in Malta it has long been the prerogative of the Roman Catholic Church to teach what family planning methods are acceptable. Church teaching on family planning changed after Vatican II (1965), but is still limited to abstinence and the rhythm method, excluding even coitus interruptus.

Our relationship with contraception still lags behind much of Europe. The 2023 Contraception Policy Atlas published by the European Parliamentary Forum for Sexual and Reproductive Rights, detailing access to modern contraception, ranked Malta 31st out of 46 countries. It is to be hoped that the free contraception promised by the Health Minister last year might improve that (as might a comprehensive sexual health policy, promised in 2021 but yet to emerge).

In our view, a major cause of the low uptake and understanding of contraception here is the widely-varying, but often limited, nature of sex education in schools, under the influence of the Roman Catholic Church which teaches that abstinence before marriage is the (unrealistic) ideal. Surely as a result, Malta has the highest teen birth rate in Southern Europe, and Maltese teens have the lowest prevalence of condom use in Europe. But it also follows that Malta has the highest rate of HIV diagnoses in the EU/EEA, and one of the highest rates of STDs.

Individual choice

As humanists, we support individual choice as far as is possible without impinging on others’ rights. Rather than seeing people only as numbers, or baby-producing machines, to somehow be controlled in one direction or the other, let’s take a humanist approach and enable everyone to decide how they live, and give them opportunities to do so, finding meaning and purpose in their own way. That would ultimately lead to a better and fairer world for all, where children would feel wanted, and each person can decide where their fulfilment lies and which role they want to play, free from coercion, discrimination, stigma, and liberated from state or religious control.