Commentary

Regarding “Texas Children’s opens $200M expanded Pavilion for Women in Houston,” (July 29): In Texas, 11.3% of pregnant women defer prenatal care until the third trimester or indefinitely, due to Medicaid enrollment delays and provider shortages. Late or missing prenatal care correlates with pre-term birth, low birth weight, and infant and maternal mortality. Read More »

As salient as extreme heat and wildfires have been this summer, an important dimension has been mostly absent from discussions of it: gender. The impacts of climate change are not gender-neutral. Heat affects different populations in different ways. Climate vulnerability depends on intersecting factors like age, income, occupation, disability, race, but also gender, which is often overlooked. Read More »

Thousands of women are killed each year in the U.S., which ranks 34th in femicide worldwide. Yet the U.S. still hasn’t recognized it as a distinct crime. In this we’re behind other countries in Europe and Latin America. For example, after a spate of high-profile killings sparked mass protests, last year Italy passed a law recognizing and criminalizing femicide. Read More »

North Carolina is becoming one of the nation’s fastest-growing hubs for AI. Data centers promise economic growth, innovation, and new jobs. But they will also increase grid demand and stress on our electricity system. To make the AI boom sustainable, State lawmakers should hit the pause button on data centers until they find ways to control spiking electricity… Read More »

World Population Day is observed each year on July 11. So perhaps a “pop quiz” – see what I did there? – is in order: The world’s population is:  A) Declining B) Growing, and projected to peak within a decade C) Growing, and projected to peak around the 2080 You’d be forgiven if you’re not entirely sure. But the answer is “C,” according to … Read More »

What happens when leading voices from environmental and climate science, law, reproductive health and rights, anthropology, and economics come together to examine the rise of pronatalism? In this academic commentary, published in The Journal of Population and Sustainability, an interdisciplinary group of researchers, including Senior Fellow and Director of FP/Earth Céline Delacroix, argues that debates … Read More »

It’s hard to believe it’s been over a year since the Trump administration sent termination letters to USAID staff and began shutting the agency down along with other foreign aid programs. In retrospect, it was a kind of soft launch, signalling a new era. Read More »

Gov. Wes Moore just signed the first update of Maryland’s law on female genital mutilation/cutting (FGM/C) in over two decades. The bill, which passed the House 120 to 0, explicitly includes FGM/C in the definition of “abuse” that health care providers and educators are required to report. Read More »

In a recent congressional hearing, the top U.S. diplomat in Haiti warned the country was “experiencing systemic collapse” as killings, kidnappings, hunger, poverty, mass displacement, and chaos surge, and as violence cuts off humanitarian aid to the 6 million people in Haiti who need it. Read More »

In a segment released on February 20, 2026, for Radio-Canada’s Adding fuel to the fire podcast (De l’huile sur le feu in French) with Rebecca Makonnen, Céline Delacroix, senior fellow and director of the FP/Earth project at the Population Institute, joined fellow guests Catherine Genest, a journalist, and Yves Marie Abraham, a specialist in sustainable degrowth, to discuss the relationship between birth rates, political economy, and personal freedom. Read More »