Population Institute Senior Fellows J. Joseph Speidel and Robert Engelman have authored a new policy brief: “Abandoned Leadership: The End of U.S. Foreign Aid for Family Planning, and What Could Come Next.” For six decades the United States government pioneered, honed, and successfully implemented a relatively inexpensive program that saved women’s and children’s lives, prevented abortions, raised the status and prospects of women and girls, and decreased poverty in the world’s poorest countries. Arguably one of the most beneficial foreign policy programs in history, the family planning and reproductive health assistance program of the U.S. Agency for International Development (USAID) directly or indirectly spurred improvements over its 64-year run in the lives of hundreds of millions of people around the world. Among its accomplishments was advancing reproductive autonomy—the ability of each person to make their own reproductive decisions—and its contribution to slowing population growth in places where rapid growth most threatened good governance and human well-being.
