Take Action Today!
Tell Your Representatives to Support an Increase in International Family Planning Funding

This past February, President Bush released his FY 2007 Budget. Attacks were made on family planning programs both in the United States and abroad. The most egregious proposed cuts were made to the U.S. Agency for International Development's Family Planning programs. If Congress were to approve the President's cuts, funding would be reduced to $357 million, a $79 million (18 percent) reduction from last year's enacted level of $436 million.

Take Action Today! The House of Representative's Foreign Operations Appropriations Bill (where funding levels for international family planning are determined) will be "marked up" or reviewed as early as today or the beginning of next week. The bill will first be reviewed by the House Subcommittee on Foreign Operations and then will go to the Full Committee in June. No Senate Appropriations action will be seen until September or even after the 2006 elections.

Here's What to Do and What to Say:

1. Call the Capitol Switchboard today at 1-866-340-9281 and ask to be connected to your Representatives' offices. Don't know who your Representatives are? Go to www.house.gov. If your Representative is a Subcommittee member, they especially need to hear from you! (Find out who the committee members are.)

2. Tell your Representatives to support international family planning programs and stand up against the President's proposed funding cuts. Request a funding level of no less than $436 million. Tell them that the health of our planet and all of its inhabitants depends on the reproductive choices we make today. Population growth contributes to the environmental dilemmas of biodiversity loss, deforestation, global warming and the spread of pollutants. Increasing our investment in family planning assistance programs slows population growth, improves the health of women and families and takes steps to ensure a more sustainable future.