Fair Start Movement

Tag: Action Alerts & Toolkits

  • TAKE ACTION AGAINST TRUMP’S ATTACK ON WOMEN AND CHILDREN

    TAKE ACTION AGAINST TRUMP’S ATTACK ON WOMEN AND CHILDREN

    The Trump administration is trying to amend our family planning policies in ways that hurt women and children, including imposition of a domestic “gag rule.” They are proposing changes to Title X – the only federal program dedicated to increasing access to contraceptive care for low-income women. It would take away funding to providers who simply mention abortion as an option.

    The Title X changes are an obvious effort to defund Planned Parenthood, who is the only healthcare service for many. The proposed rules are intended to mislead women about their health care options and would encourage the use of ineffective birth control methods. Women deserve facts. The proposed Title X changes will affect people for their entire lives.

    TAKE ACTION – Comments are due 07/31/2018 at 11:59 PM EDT.

    Draft key points are below – feel free to copy, modify and/or otherwise use: 

    • This radical proposal has never been implemented in the United States and it would jeopardize the trusting relationship between women and their providers and put the health of the 4 million women nationwide who use Title X clinics at risk.
    • The proposed rule could increase the rate of unintended pregnancy by eliminating the requirement that Title X clinics provide access to the full range of FDA-approved contraceptive methods,
    • Methods encouraged in this rule such as “natural family planning” and “fertility awareness-based” methods are significantly less effective with typical use than long-acting methods, leading to a higher number of unintended pregnancies.
    • Reducing unintended pregnancy helps families get off to the best possible start. It empowers women to attain their education goals, helping create financially secure and strong families, lowers the abortion rate and reduces the number of people who need to use Medicaid and other public assistance programs.

     

     

     

  • World Population Day: Having Kids Calls for Day of Action at the United Nations

    World Population Day: Having Kids Calls for Day of Action at the United Nations

    Read the press release here. 

    Today, in anticipation of World Population Day on July 11th, the national child-protection organization Having Kids called upon the United Nations Secretary General to abandon the UN’s outdated family planning modeling in favor of a sustainable “smaller family” model. Having Kids will be peacefully leafleting in front of the UN headquarters tomorrow, urging Sec. Gen. António Guterres to issue a statement on family planning supporting the need for smaller families worldwide. The facts are crystal clear:

    Having Kids Executive Director Anne Green said this: “We offer the child-first Fair Start family planning model as a sustainable alternative to the UN’s current free-for-all and isolationist model. The Fair Start model is cooperative rather than isolationist, is based upon binding sources of international law, and provides a clear human rights-based solution to the problems discussed above and a path forward.”

    TAKE ACTION NOW

    Having Kids is a 501(c)3 nonprofit nonprofit organization dedicated to reforming family planning by replacing parent-centered family planning models with the human rights-based and child-first Fair Start model.

  • Urge the Guardian To Connect the Issues

    Urge the Guardian To Connect the Issues

    Last month we asked the Guardian to correct a confusing story that said changing one’s diet is the most effective way to reduce one’s impact on Earth, and mitigate climate change. As we explained, and the Guardian previously reported, that is not true. Ensuring smaller families is the most effective action – so much so, that in one recent report the impact of having one child less could not even be easily graphed against other actions. It’s not the first time the Guardian has elided family planning when discussing climate change.

    Most discussions of family planning and the environment – the Guardian included – involve narratives of the most compassionate and thoughtful people one can imagine forgoing having kids entirely. But is that what we really want? Would discussions of the need for better family planning policies, for all, make more sense?

    Ignoring a culture of family planning that treats each family as if it were an isolated unit condemns future generations to a luck-of-the-draw birth lottery that ensure poor kids stay poor, and rich kids stay rich. Journalists have a responsibility to put issues in context. In that sense, they should start at the source, and bring attention to idea of focusing our family planning on collectively ensuring a fair start in life for every child.

    It’s time for the Guardian to connect the dots, and see the linkages between the issues it reports on – from needy kids, to water shortages, to the cycle of child abuse and neglect, to maternal deaths worldwide – and the need for better family planning.

    We can all do better. Our future depends on it.

    Urge the Editor of the Guardian Katharine Viner to reconsider the paper’s approach to family planning by tweeting her @KathViner or by sending her a brief letter guardian.letters@theguardian.com.

  • Urge UN To Promote Better Family Planning After Trump’s Child Separation Scandal

    Urge UN To Promote Better Family Planning After Trump’s Child Separation Scandal

    Today Having Kids called on the United Nation High Commissioner for Human Rights to prioritize every child’s right to a fair start in life in response to President Trump’s child separation scandal. While decrying President Trump’s policy, the group called his disregard for children and their right to healthy development part of a much larger problem.

    Read the full letter here. 

    Trump’s policy is only one example of how we ignore the right of every child to a fair start in life. 

    • The letter pointed out that without the sensational border crisis the plight of these children, through poverty, trauma, and deprivation, would be ignored.
    • The letter linked the child abuse at the border, and the permanent harm it would cause the children, to the impacts of childhood poverty and trauma more generally, and noted immigration policies would not address these larger issues.
    • The group called on the Human Rights Council, from which the United States recently withdrew, to adopt a child-first Fair Start family planning model, rather than the current model of planning.

    Anne Green, Executive Director of Having Kids, said this: “Now is the time for the Human Rights Council to take a bold step towards creating a better world for future children.” “Now is the time to prioritize the needs of future children and promote the universal value of smaller, more sustainable, and truly equitable families.”

    Take action: Tweet UN HRC High Commissioner, at @UNHumanRights, and politely suggest he act on our request. 

     

  • UNFPA Must Address Climate Change. Take Action.

    UNFPA Must Address Climate Change. Take Action.

    Today, given a recent study showing that the loss of ice in Antarctica has tripled in a decade as a result of the climate change crisis, Having Kids called upon the United Nations Population Fund (UNFPA) to abandon its outdated family planning modeling in favor of the sustainable Fair Start model. Family planning is the most effective way to address climate change and other environmental threats.

    This is our message to the UNFPA Executive Director Natalia Kanem: 

    Dr. Kanem:

    We respectfully request that you consider reforming the family planning model at the heart of the United Nations Population Fund’s work. The UNFPA currently uses an outdated family planning model that was developed before the manifestation of climate change, key developments in the science of early childhood development, and the massive and growing gap between rich and poor that exists today. That outdated model should be reformed to account for these things, and many other problems it exacerbates.

    The current model adopted by the UNFPA recognizes the fundamental human right of parents to decide the number, spacing, and timing of their children. It treats parents as if they were isolated from one another and their community in the act of planning, and does not include the rights of future persons, animals and their environment, the role of family planning in further democracy, etc. That model has no basis in binding sources of international law, and is unethical.

    How does that model account for parents that choose to have massive families, degrade the environment we all share, and put us all at risk? How does it account for parents’ obligation to not flout the Children’s Rights Convention, or even basic standards of fitness, by bringing children into existence below legally mandated thresholds? How does it account for the obligation parents and their community share to give every child a fair start in life, with opportunities equal to their peers? The UNFPA’s current model is isolationist, and by focusing on parents, violates the fundamental human rights of future children and communities.

    We offer the child-first Fair Start family planning model as a sustainable alternative to the UNFPA’s isolationist model. The Fair Start model is cooperative rather than isolationist, is based u[on binding sources of international law, and provides a clear human rights-based solution to the problems discussed above and a path forward. It is also reflected in the worldwide trend towards smaller families that can invest more in each child and ensure a safer future.

    Take action, and ask Dr. Kanem to consider our request by tweeting her at @Atayeshe.

     

  • Indiana Child Abuse: Take Action

    Indiana Child Abuse: Take Action

    Having Kids is petitioning Indiana Gov. Eric Holcomb, as well as state officials, to consider the possibility of an unusual order in the event an Indiana couple is convicted of child abuse or neglect.

    Read the full letter here. 

    In mid-April 2018, the Department of Child Service, in response to multiple anonymous phone calls, removed four children from a home in Greenfield, Indiana occupied by Christopher Smith and Chantelle Oliver.  According to court records, Smith allegedly engaged in regular physical and verbal abuse of the children including punching and slapping them, grabbed the children by the hair, and smacking them in the face. Per DCS records, the children were, at first, afraid to talk to investigators, fearing for their own safety.  One child stated that Smith once pushed her head into a wall, causing her nose to bleed. Smith was arrested and charged with multiple counts, including three felony counts of domestic battery on a person less than 14 years old. He has denied harming any of the children.

    Having Kids is urging state officials to consider a Fair Start court order, in the event of a conviction, temporarily prohibiting the couple from having additional children during the pendency of any probation in order to facilitate the couple’s rehabilitation and recovery, and also to prevent the neglect of any future children.

    “We waiting for kids to be abused, rather than preventing the abuse” said Anne Green, Executive Director of Having Kids. “It’s time to change the way we plan families” The model Fair Start order is noncoercive and seeks to strike a balance between the rights of parents and the needs of future children and the community.

    In 2016 alone, there were 28,430 victims of abuse or neglect in Indiana, an increase of 7.7% from 2015.[4]  Even more alarming, the number of fatalities as a result of child abuse and neglect more than doubled in Indiana in 2016 to 70 deaths (from 34 in 2015), making Indiana have the unfortunate distinction as the state with the highest percentage of increases in child-abuse-related deaths in the country.[5]  

    Take action: Tweet Gov. Holcomb at @GovHolcomb and politely ask him to consider our request.

  • Time to End Child Abuse? Take Action Now.

    Time to End Child Abuse? Take Action Now.

    Today Having Kids is petitioning Gov. Rick Scott, as well as state officials and a presiding judge, to consider the possibility of an unusual order in the event a Sarasota couple is convicted of child abuse or neglect.

    In late January, 2018, the Department of Children and Family Services went to the home of Shane Samuels on a child welfare check.  Inside a home with cigarette butts and trash strewn about the floor, investigators found a four-year-old boy with a large red, swollen handprint on the side his face.  Samuels told investigators (and later Sarasota County Sheriff’s deputies) that this child had simply fallen in the backyard and that his injuries were the result of an accident. Doctors’ reports described the boy’s injuries, bruising and hemorrhaging on his face, neck and ears, as the result of “severe physical child abuse” and, on February 13, 2018, the Sheriff’s deputies arrested Samuels and charged him with aggravated child abuse.

    Having Kids is urging state officials to consider a Fair Start court order, in the event of a conviction, temporarily prohibiting the couple from having additional children during the pendency of any probation in order to facilitate the couple’s rehabilitation and recovery, and also to prevent the neglect of any future children.

    Read the full letter here.

    In 2015 alone, there were more than 160,000 reports of child abuse and neglect referred for investigation in Florida. Even more alarming, there were a staggering 126 fatalities from child abuse and neglect in Florida in 2017 – twice as high as the national average. This contributes to Florida’s dismal ranking of 40th in the nation for child wellbeing.

    Take action: Write Gov. Scott a polite message at Rick.Scott@eog.myflorida.gov or tweet him at @FLGovScott and ask him to consider Having Kids’ letter. 

     

  • Urge the U.N. Secretary General to Support Child-First Family Planning

    Urge the U.N. Secretary General to Support Child-First Family Planning

    As the United Nations Commission on Population and Development meets in New York this week, Having Kids is urging Secretary General António Guterres to issue a new statement on family planning. Previous Secretary General statements have focused on the rights of parents; Having Kids is urging the Secretary-General to now make a statement that includes the needs of future children and how those needs must shape truly human rights-based family planning models.

    Read the full letter here. 

    Circumstances have changed since former Secretaries General have issued family planning statements; a revised statement is urgently needed.

    • Several studies confirm that smaller families are the best way to confront climate change, as well as other and related environmental crises. If we take climate change seriously, we must laud the benefits of a global family planning ethic that promotes smaller families.
    • The science of early childhood development shows the disproportionate impact the beginning of our lives has on the rest of our lives. This holds true, among other things, for economic inequality.
    • Better family planning is now understood to be an effective way to prevent the conditions that give rise to terrorism and other conflict-based threats to human rights and democracy.

    Take action now. Contact Secretary General Guterres here and politely urge him to consider our request.

    Having Kids is a 501(c)3 nonprofit nonprofit organization dedicated to reforming family planning by replacing parent-centered family planning models with the human rights-based and child-first Fair Start model.

  • Toys R Us Fails To Adapt, Blames Fertility Rates

    Toys R Us Fails To Adapt, Blames Fertility Rates

    In the wake of its bankruptcy announcement, Toys R Us is giving out free family planning advice: Americans, and millennials in particular, are not having enough kids.

    Forget the fact that having large families is the worst way for the average person to exacerbate climate change, otherwise destroy the environment all kids will need to thrive in the future, and lock in the family-based disparity of wealth that is ripping at the fabric of American democracy. What really matters is that Toys R Us exploit more workers to sell more toys, toys that your kids don’t need.

    Toys R Us is worried that smaller families will hurt the U.S. economy. Here’s a thought: The U.S. is meant, primarily, to be a democracy, rather than an economy. What’s the difference? Democracies are by nature smaller, so that each person in them has a voice and plays a role. Their members are not lost in the crowd. Democracies are by nature sustainable, because their future citizens matter. Democracies are made up of free and equal people in whom prior generations have invested much, and right from the start. People in democracies don’t plan families based on how to best sell toys. They plan them based on what children need to thrive as self-determining, free and equal people.

    The move towards smaller families, with parents investing more in each child, represents a move away from the oppressive and unsustainable economies of old towards real democracy, and the end of companies like Toys R Us  – which recently filed for bankruptcy. They should accept the blame for failing to adapt to the 21st century landscape in order to compete with Amazon and other big box and online retailers, rather than pointing the finger at families.

    Toys R Us is wrong on family planning. Tweet @ToysRUs and tell them to stop blaming parents for their business failures.