From the Earth Policy website, an extract from Chapter 7 of Lester R. Brown's Plan B 2.0:Rescuing a Planet Under Stress and a Civilization in Trouble, 2006. (The follow-up to this, Plan B 3.0: Mobilizing to Save Civilization, is available for sale as of today!)
"The United Nations estimated that meeting the needs of the 201 million women who do not have access to effective contraception could each year prevent 52 million unwanted pregnancies, 22 million induced abortions, and 1.4 million infant deaths. Some 142,000 pregnancy-related deaths could also be prevented. The costs to society of not filling the family planning gap are unacceptably high. 28
Reinforcing these U.N. calculations are data from the grassroots showing how access to family planning services helps couples achieve their desired family size. Surveys in Honduras, for example, show poor women (often lacking family planning services) having twice as many children as they want, while women in high socioeconomic groups are quite successful at having the number of children they desire.29"
29. Honduran Ministry of Health, Encuesta Nacional de Epidemiología y Salud Familiar
Guzman, “Population, Poverty, and Vulnerability: Mitigating the Effects of Natural Disasters,” in Environmental Change and Security Project Report (Washington, DC: Woodrow Wilson International
Center for Scholars, 2002), pp. 45–68. (National Survey of Epidemiology and Family Health) (Tegucigalpa: 1996), cited in George Martine and Jose Miguel
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