By Katie Halper • @kthalps • 10 years ago

Infographic: Americans spend more money on potato chips than on contraception

What do 222 million women in developing nations around the world have in common? They all want access to modern contraceptive. In a new video and infographic, Population Action International explains that if the U.S. contributed a mere .03% of its federal budget towards international family planning, they could provide the 222 million women– more than the combined populations of Spain, The Netherlands, France, Germany and Belgium– with the contraception they so desperately want and need. This would save the lives of 70,000 women and prevent the deaths of one million infants each year!

transcript coming soon and will be after the jump. If any readers could provide it, that would be amazing!

Right now  in developing countries around the world, 222 million women want something they can’t get.
That’s more than the entire population of Germany, Spain, France, Belgium, and the Netherlands combined.
And all of them want access to modern contraceptives.
In 2012 alone, meeting this global demand would have prevented 54 million unplanned pregnancies, 26 million abortions, many of which were unsafe, 79,000 maternal deaths, and 1.1 million infant deaths.
But that’s just the beginning. Studies have shown that enabling women to have the number of children they want, when they want them, leads to …
Better education
More job opportunities
Healthier lives
And economic security.
It also gives their babies a better chance of surviving and growing up to live happy, healthy lives of their own.
Fortunately, countries and other donors are pitching in to help. And the U.S’s fair share is one billion dollars
Or just about three dollars per American per year. That’s less than the price of a fancy latte.
AND it’s just a tiny, tiny sliver of the United States’ Federal budget.
Every dollar we spend on family planning in the developing world can actually save four dollars in other areas, such as
Education
Healthcare
Water
and
Sanitation.
Spend one dollar now. Save four dollars later.
Help make these women’s lives better,
and make our aid dollars go further in the process.
Ask the U.S. meet its fair share to meet the demand for contraception.
Support $1 billion for international family planning.

nyc

Born and raised on the mean streets of New York City’s Upper West Side, Katie Halper is a comic, writer, blogger, satirist and filmmaker based in New York. Katie graduated from The Dalton School (where she teaches history) and Wesleyan University (where she learned that labels are for jars.) A director of Living Liberally and co-founder/performer in Laughing Liberally, Katie has performed at Town Hall, Symphony Space, The Culture Project, D.C. Comedy Festival, all five Netroots Nations, and The Nation Magazine Cruise, where she made Howard Dean laugh! and has appeared with Lizz Winstead, Markos Moulitsas, The Yes Men, Cynthia Nixon and Jim Hightower. Her writing and videos have appeared in The New York Times, Comedy Central, The Nation Magazine, Gawker, Nerve, Jezebel, the Huffington Post, Alternet and Katie has been featured in/on NY Magazine, LA Times, In These Times, Gawker,Jezebel, MSNBC, Air America, GritTV, the Alan Colmes Show, Sirius radio (which hung up on her once) and the National Review, which called Katie “cute and some what brainy.” Katie co-produced Tim Robbins’s film Embedded, (Venice Film Festival, Sundance Channel); Estela Bravo’s Free to Fly (Havana Film Festival, LA Latino Film Festival); was outreach director for The Take, Naomi Klein/Avi Lewis documentary about Argentine workers (Toronto & Venice Film Festivals, Film Forum); co-directed New Yorkers Remember the Spanish Civil War, a video for Museum of the City of NY exhibit, and wrote/directed viral satiric videos including Jews/ Women/ Gays for McCain.

Katie is a writer, comedian, filmmaker, and New Yorker.

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