The study by Oye-Adeniran and colleagues who surveyed 2,001 persons aged 14–49 from Anambra, Oyo, Kaduna and Bauchi states in Nigeria. Of the 2,001 people surveyed, 1,647 (82.3 percent) were sexually active, out of whom 244 were found to be using contraceptive methods at the time of the study, giving a contraceptive prevalence rate of 14.8 percent.
Currently, only 18% of married women in Uganda report contraceptive use. This number can and should be higher. The good news is that we have family planning solutions; we just need to make them more accessible.
Cultural and familial barriers to family planning may influence a woman’s decision to use contraception. For example, a husband may disapprove because he wants more children or is concerned about health effects, bothered by the inconvenience, or distrustful of traditional methods. Such objections may reflect informational or access issues or health concerns. Except for a woman’s personal opposition to contraception, the objections appear to be less prominent where programs are active.
In Houston last year, nationally known religious right figures protested a new Planned Parenthood facility on Martin Luther King Jr. Day. Drawing on the conspiracy theories prevalent in the anti-choice movement that Planned Parenthood intentionally places facilities in minority neighborhoods because it is bent on “black genocide,” the protesters claimed that the new Planned Parenthood facility was an “abortion super-center” targeting Latina and black women in the south Houston neighborhood.
The conversion of communities is an imperative even when abortion isn’t on the table. Grace Community Church pastor Steve Riggle, a board member of the Houston Area Pastors Council and prominent endorser of The Response, recently invited Ugandan evangelist Jackson Senyonga to preach at the mid-week prayer service at his church. During the service, which ended with a frenetic faith-healing—during which Senyonga laid hands on congregants, many of whom fell to the floor, quivering and speaking in tongues—Senyonga described, in great detail, how he converted a Ugandan witch doctor to Christianity. He went on to provide instruction on how to prevent the nearby Houston suburb, The Woodlands, from “going to hell.”
Perry’s speech was drawn from religious anti-choice rhetoric that has fanned out from courtrooms and legislatures into a spiritual war zone in the nation’s churches and streets. Yet, even as these activists have framed their efforts to end abortion as spiritual warfare, they’ve simultaneously shifted from calling abortion “murder” to claiming civil rights for fetuses and celebrating the “compassion” of those who would “protect” the “unborn.”