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Manipulation or helpful information?

Critics accuse family planning groups of pushing Western views of birth control, smaller families on developing nations.

By RICK MERCIER

Date published: 3/11/2003

By Rick Mercier

The series • Day 1: The debate over U.S. funding of population programs. Related: How big is birth problem? • Day 2: Local representative weighs in on battle over population programs. • Day 3: Allegations of manipulation, abuses. Rick Mercier, Viewpoints editor for The Free Lance–Star, traveled to Kenya to examine reproductive-health issues in the developing world. His research was made possible by a World Affairs Journalism Fellowship from the International Center for Journalists and the World Affairs Council.

Before last summer, Beatrice Wambui was like many young Kenyan women.

The 20-year-old had little knowledge about reproductive health, and even the little bit she was taught in secondary school didn't really sink in. "I wasn't paying attention," she confesses.

Then last May, she joined the newly formed Binti Pamoja ("Daughters United") project, which is geared for young women living in Kibera, a massive slum on the outskirts of Kenya's capital, Nairobi. The program offered Wambui and other young women the opportunity to talk and learn about a range of reproductive-health matters, from how to handle pressure to have sex to how to use contraception and avoid sexually transmitted diseases.

The project "has challenged me," Wambui says.

Binti Pamoja member Fatuma Roba says before the program, "I didn't know about my rights. I didn't know where I could go for my health."

Parents of the young women in the project have supported the reproductive-health education, too, Wambui says. "They are willing for youths to be taught" about their sexuality, she says.

But are education and outreach programs such as Binti Pamoja manipulating women in the developing world--taking advantage of their ignorance to push a Western agenda of contraception and smaller families?

Judie Brown, president of the Stafford-based American Life League, thinks so.

"I think if you're propagandizing a poor woman, and you're holding something out in front of her--something that you know she wants--and you tell her the best way to get this is to have abortions or use the pill, she's going to believe you, because you're propagandizing her," she says.

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Date published: 3/11/2003