Last night I attended an event run by Save the Children to raise awareness of their Give Girls Power campaign. We discovered that, without the right information about sex and adequate contraception, girls are becoming mothers too young and their babies are dying. These girls are also unable to leave gaps between pregnancies and so end up with too many children to feed. We were told that, “around the world, 222 million women who want contraception don’t have access, and 1 million teenage girls are injured or die in pregnancy and birth every year – in fact pregnancy is the leading cause of death for teenage girls worldwide.” Shocking, isn’t it?
When you have easy access to sex education and contraception, trying to fully imagine what it must be like without it is pretty tricky. To go through puberty and then not be able to make your own choices about what to do with your life, and your own body, is something that we just can’t fully grasp. Save the Children have created an online game for their Give Girls Power campaign where you step into the shoes of a 16-year-old girl who doesn’t have the power to make the choices we take for granted, and it’s quite scary. I can’t even begin to imagine what my life would have been like if I’d not been able to choose if and when to start a family. Neither can the women in this short video…
So, please, sign Save the Children’s Give Girls Power petition ahead of the meeting of world leaders at the Family Planning Summit in London on Wednesday 11th July. Let David Cameron know how important family planning and the right to contraception are to the lives of millions of women around the world.
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