Standing with Our Sisters Here and Worldwide

Most Americans are unaware of the devastating and often deadly impacts of restrictive U.S. policies on the reproductive health and lives of women worldwide. Every year, an estimated 100,000 women worldwide suffer obstetric fistulas because of prolonged labor and no access to medical care. Each year, 529,000 women and girls die worldwide due to complications related to pregnancy, including as many as 80,000 women and girls who die every year from botched abortions, hundreds of thousands more are injured. It is estimated that currently 200 million want to delay or prevent pregnancy, but lack access to contraceptives.

The fight we face on the domestic front and the fight that we face on the global front for reproductive rights are not two separate battles: They are one and the same. It is crucial to align domestic and global family-planning movements to save women’s lives. The U.S. must once again become engaged on the international stage in expanding support for international family planning assistance to save women's lives.

Download FM's fact sheets:

• The United States Must Increase International Family Planning Funding
• Ratify Key International Treaties
• Ms. Magazine Winter 2008 issue, "Global Gag Rule Kills Women"

Take Action on Your Campus Today!

• Organize a die-in to dramatize the tens of thousands of women who die each year of botched, illegal abortions
• Hold a panel discussion on International Family Planning
• Urge everyone on your campus that cares about saving women's lives to sign the petition
• Sponsor a showing of the "Global Majority...Again" video followed by a discussion
• Launch the Afghan Women's Health Initiative on your campus

Anushay Hossain: Global Programs Coordinator Anushay Hossain began her feminist career at the Bangladesh Rural Advancement Committee (BRAC) working on microfinance and non formal primary education programs for impoverished women and girls in her native country, Bangladesh. She graduated from the University of Virginia in 2002 and joined the Feminist Majority Foundation's Campaign for Afghan Women as Project Organizer. In 2004 Anushay moved to the United Kingdom where she completed her Master’s in Gender and Development from the University of Sussex, focusing her dissertation on the barriers women face in accessing reproductive healthcare in Bangladesh. Anushay spent a year working at UNIFEM UK (United Nations Development Fund for Women) before returning to the Feminist Majority where she invests the majority of her work on global reproductive healthcare, both at the grassroots and policy levels. Phone: (703) 522-2214 Email: ahossain@feminist.org