梅琳达·盖茨：没有它，就没有我的今天

我的家庭、事业和如今拥有的生活，都是避孕用品催生的直接结果。现在，我意识到自己是何等幸运。

我是在德克萨斯州的一个天主教家庭里长大的。我从来没有猜想到，未来有一天，我会在世界各地谈论避孕用品的好处，当然也从未想象过我会公开谈论自己的节育经验。但最近这些日子，我做了很多这方面的事情。

在比尔和我创建我们的基金会之后，一切都改变了。在海外考察期间，我发现许多妇女怀孕过早或过晚，还有很多妇女的怀孕频率远远超出其身体的承受能力。在一些社区，我遇到的每个人都认识一位死于分娩的妇女。在另一些社区，我遇到的每位妇女都失去了一个孩子。还有更多的母亲极度渴望不要再次怀孕，因为她们无力喂养，还需要照顾现有的孩子。我开始明白为什么即使我不在那里谈论避孕，妇女们仍然会不断地提及这个话题。

与这些妇女相处一段时间后，我发现自己不可能拒绝施以援手。我也开始回想避孕用品给我自己的生活带来了哪些变革性影响。

我的三个孩子都是相隔三年出生。直到研究生毕业，并在微软工作十年之后，我才有了第一个孩子。所有这一切并非偶然。我的家庭、事业和如今拥有的生活，都是避孕用品催生的直接结果。现在，我意识到自己是何等幸运。

甚至在我写这篇文章之际，世界上仍然有多达2.25亿妇女不想怀孕，但无法获得现代避孕用品。美国全球卫生政策最近的改变，很快就将进一步推高这个数字。当我们继续辩论这个话题时，我认为所有人都必须站在妇女的角度理解其利害关系——避孕事关这些妇女的家庭和未来。

对于这些妇女来说，规划怀孕时机的能力是一件生死攸关的大事。仅在去年，计划生育工具就帮助避免了12.4万名妇女死亡。更健康的妇女拥有更健康的孩子，所以避孕的好处将惠及几代人。当妇女让孩子的出生日期至少间隔三年时，这些孩子存活一年的几率是其他孩子的两倍，活到五岁的几率比其他孩子高出35%。

此外，避孕用品经常是一位妇女的家庭能否摆脱贫困的决定性因素。研究表明，通常情况下，获得计划生育工具的妇女不仅孩子少，而且拥有更高的个人和家庭收入。这些孩子接受教育的时间更长，这也将增加下一代的经济潜力。

在这些统计数据的背后，是许多震撼人心的故事。几年前，我在肯尼亚碰到一位妇女，她刚刚开始经营一门用牛仔布碎片缝制背包的小生意。她希望这笔新收入将帮助她的三个孩子过上更好的生活，但她非常清醒地意识到，这门生意能否做下去，完全取决于她延迟下一次怀孕的能力。

去年春天在印度遇到的一位妇女，向我讲述了一个类似的故事。她打算在最小的女儿刚到上学年龄之后就立刻回去上班。她憧憬着这份额外收入将给她的家庭生活带来多大的改善，但她如此兴奋还有一个简单的原因：她非常热爱教师这门工作。避孕用品不仅赋予她经济上的权力，也让她有机会追逐自己的梦想。

现如今，当我遇到一些仍然不相信避孕用品应该在其政策议程上占有一席之地的领导人时，我会告诉他们：如果你希望孩子们有机会拥有一个健康的未来，如果你希望妇女有机会帮助她们的家庭脱贫致富，如果你希望穷国有机会成为富国，那么你就必须关心避孕问题。

证据和经验表明，被赋权的妇女是进步的驱动者、财富的创造者，以及世界上最强大的变革力量。我在海外遇到的妇女已做好准备，并且愿意为一个更加美好的未来做出贡献。我们有责任确保她们拥有这个机会。

梅琳达•盖茨是比尔和梅林达•盖茨基金会的联席主席。该基金会日前发布了其年度信。（财富中文网）

译者：Kevin

Growing up in a Catholic household in Texas, I never would have guessed that I would one day travel around the world talking about the benefits of contraceptives. I certainly never imagined that I’d speak out publicly about my own experience with family planning. But these days, I’m doing a lot of both.

Everything changed when Bill and I started our foundation. I started traveling to places where women were getting pregnant too young, too old, and too often for their bodies to handle. I visited communities where everyone I met knew a woman who had died in childbirth. I visited communities where every woman I met had lost a child. I met still more mothers who were desperate not to get pregnant again because they couldn’t afford to feed and take care of the children they already had. And I began to understand why, even though I wasn’t there to talk about contraceptives, women kept bringing them up anyway.

After spending time with these women, I found it impossible to turn my back on them. I thought about them all the time. I also started reflecting on just how transformative contraceptives have been in my own life.

It’s no accident that my three kids were born three years apart—or that I didn’t have my first child until I’d finished graduate school and devoted a decade to my career at Microsoft. My family, my career, my life as I know it are all the direct result of contraceptives. And now, I realize how lucky that makes me.

Even as I write this, there are 225 million women in the world who do not want to get pregnant but do not have access to modern contraceptives. A recent change to U.S. global health policy will soon drive that number up even higher. And as we continue to debate this issue, I think it’s important that all of us understand its stakes from the perspective of the women whose families and futures hang in the balance.

For many of these women, the ability to plan their pregnancies is nothing less than a matter of life and death. Last year alone, family planning tools helped avert the deaths of 124,000 women. Healthier women have healthier children, so the impact of contraceptives ripples across generations. When women space the births of their children by at least three years, their babies are twice as likely to survive their first year of life—and 35% more likely to live to see their fifth birthday.

What’s more, contraceptives are often a key determining factor in whether a woman is able to lift her family out of poverty. Research shows that women with access to family planning tools not only tend to have fewer children, they also tend to have higher individual and household incomes. Their kids spend more time in school, increasing the economic potential of the next generation, too.

The stories behind these statistics are powerful and personal. A few years ago, I met a woman in Kenya who had just started a small business sewing backpacks out of denim scraps. She hoped this new income would help her give her three kids a better life, but she was very aware that her ability to keep the business at all depended on her ability to delay her next pregnancy.

A woman I met in India last spring told me a similar story. She was planning to go back to work as soon as her youngest daughter was old enough to start school. And while she was excited about what the extra income would mean for her family, she was also excited simply because she loved her job as a teacher. Contraceptives not only empowered her economically—they empowered her to be who she wanted to be in the world.

These days, when I meet with leaders who still aren’t convinced that contraceptives deserve a place on the agenda, here’s what I tell them: If you care about giving children a chance at a healthy future, if you care about giving women a chance to take their families from poverty to prosperity, and if you care about giving poor countries the chance to become rich ones, then you must care about contraceptives.

Both evidence and experience show that empowered women are drivers of progress, creators of wealth, and the world’s greatest force for transforming societies. The women I met overseas are ready and willing to contribute to a better future for all of us. We should take it on ourselves to make sure they have that chance.

Melinda Gates is co-chair of the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation. The Foundation released its annual letter on Tuesday.