Birth Control as a Part of Family Planning Policies - Essay Example

Control Birth control is a part of family planning policies aimed to limit the number of children and undesirable pregnancies. Overpopulation is the main problem faced by modern society. Today, the world's population increases by 203,800 every day (Kass-Annese and Danzer, 2003).

Among the advocates of birth control, opinion divides over the urgency of the population problem. While concerned about the problems of overpopulation in the world, including the United States, these experts viewed policy change as an incremental process that came from careful research and the persuasion of political leaders (Kass-Annese and Danzer, 2003). At the other end of the spectrum stand activists who view overpopulation as a national and global emergency that needs to be addressed immediately and with radical, coercive measures if voluntary programs cannot help.

Birth control methods are divided into physical methods and behavioral methods. The main physical methods are briers and hormonal methods, ormeloxifene and intrauterine methods, emergency contraception, induced abortion, and sterilization. Behavioral methods belong: to futility awareness, statistical methods and 'interrupted sex', abstinence, and lactational period (Birth Control 2007). Many advocates of birth control state that the population problem remains serious and the issue should be addressed through private efforts and a gradual change in public policy.

Overpopulation stands above any specific attachment to a particular economic system. As a result, family planning becomes an ideology in itself. Subsequently, proponents of family planning, while believing that the issue should remain nonpartisan, prove surprisingly flexible in their political allegiances. Catholic opposition to artificial birth control and the constraints feels by the Catholic bishops about mounting direct opposition to federal family planning programs. More vociferous opposition to family planning comes from black nationalists and radicals.

The emergence of the abortion issue in the late 1960s, as reformers sought to liberalize abortion laws on the state level, mobilized opposition from the Catholic Church. The politics of abortion transformed the politics of population and family planning policy. While the abortion issue tended to divide groups along ideological lines of liberal and conservative, it is worth noting that many gray areas remained in this ideological polarization. For example, many feminists spearheaded the campaign against federally funded involuntary sterilization of poor women, and many of these feminists, along with many blacks leaders, remained leery of the population control aspects of American international and domestic family planning programs ((Kass-Annese and Danzer, 2003).

Coinciding with the growth of the feminist movement, the composition of the advocacy movement for federal planning shifts from control by established interests in the philanthropic community to pro-abortion and antiabortion groups mobilized on the grassroots level. As a result, the abortion issue becomes part of a larger political debate concerning the role of women, the breakdown of traditional families, sexuality, welfare, and social policy, and the general culture in American democratic society.

Moreover, advocates criticize federal family planning policy for relying primarily on Medicaid reimbursements to private health care providers. Birth control is an important part of political and social policies because it greatly impacts the health and well-being of the population.