Contraceptives are one of the greatest antipoverty, we will give women access to them.

Melinda Gate Foundation

Last week, just a few days after the White House proposed dramatic cuts to health and development aid, I headed to Indonesia. The timing was coincidental — the trip had been planned for months — but the reason I was going happened to be especially relevant to our country’s national debate. Indonesia has strategically used foreign aid to transform itself from a poor nation into a middle-income one. I was there to talk about the role that smart investments in contraceptives have played in the transformation.

Many people don’t realize the role contraceptives play in building a more stable and prosperous world. For most of my life, I certainly didn’t. But after Bill and I started our foundation and I began spending time in developing countries, women kept telling me about their unmet need for family planning and asking what I could do to help. When I started looking at the data, I learned that contraceptives are actually one of the greatest anti-poverty innovations the world has ever seen.

Consider the fact that 50 years ago, fewer than one in 10 Indonesian women were using family planning tools. The average Indonesian woman had five or six children, and she was raising them in extreme poverty.

Then, with support from donor nations like the U.S., Indonesia implemented a hugely successful family planning program. In just one generation, access to contraceptives skyrocketed to over 50%. Most women decided to have just two or three children. More of those children were able to stay longer in school, more women were able to work outside the home, and prospects for families across the country began to improve.
USA TODAY