World Contraception Day takes place on September 26th every year. The annual worldwide campaign centers around a vision where every pregnancy is wanted. Launched in 2007, WCD’s mission is to improve awareness of contraception and to enable young people to make informed choices on their sexual and reproductive health.
The COVID-19 pandemic has negatively impacted the well-being of women in multiple ways, including contraception, family planning, and gender-based violence. The consequences include millions of unintended pregnancies, 500,000 more girls being forced into marriage, and 31 million additional cases of gender-based violence in the first six months of lockdown alone.
These topics have therefore become more urgent as life circumstances have changed drastically throughout the last year. In fact, the progress made in the past decades on these matters is strongly at risk of being rolled back. The pandemic is deepening pre-existing inequalities and exposing vulnerabilities in social, political, and economic systems, which have a negative effect on women especially, as investigated circumstances show.
The most recent BDHS reports that 62% of currently married women aged 15–49 years in Bangladesh are using any contraceptive methods, with 54% using a modern method. In Bangladesh, almost one-third of pregnancies are still unintended which may be attributed to the unmet need for family planning and discontinuation and switching of methods after initiation of their use.
Tentative Discussion Points: