Margaret Sanger, the founder of Planned Parenthood, decided to help spread knowledge about family planning after nursing a woman back to health from a botched abortion. Sanger would open her first birth control clinic on October 16th, 1916 in Brownsville, Brooklyn. She wouldn’t stop there. One hundred years later, 1 in 5 women visit Planned Parenthood in the United States to take advantage of their several services that they provide which include knowledge about contraceptives, STD tests and treatments, pregnancy tests, screenings for breast and cervical cancer, and more. About half of Planned Parenthood centers also provide abortions. All of which is paid for by government money.
With the new presidency of Donald Trump in the United States,
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This began the modern family planning movement, but not everyone jumped on board. During the 1960s, as African colonies began to gain independence from colonial powers and 2 decades after, family planning was left on the backburner despite its imperative need due to a mix of factors that included religious and age-old traditions, social norms, and a twisted view of contraceptives caused by …show more content…
This enthusiasm, gave reason to politicians of the regions in sub-Saharan Africa to not acknowledge programs aimed at reducing fertility. Even though in the country of Ghana, who was the first in the region to be involved in the United Nations round of national censuses, the “total fertility rate had been around 7.0 births per woman until at least the 1960s.” Men in power saw a large population as advantageous rather than a problem. Sub-Saharan Africa contained mostly rural families who concurred with the benefits of large families as they could share the load of manual labor.
Traditional and social norms also pushed against African leaders, along with its people. Shelia Rule of the New York Times wrote about the traditional attitudes toward fertility, “To men, numerous offspring are living symbols of virility. Wives and offspring represent wealth in the form of manpower.” According to John F. May, “couples have traditionally tried to protect and save as many newborns as possible” out of fear of infant mortality. In addition, the more children born meant a greater chance of them surviving to support their parents in their old