By Alexander Sanger

India recently released its Census 2011, which, despite government efforts to the contrary, revealed a continuing deterioration of the nation’s child sex ratio. In the 0 to 6 age group, the number of females per 1000 males declined to 914 from 927 in 2001, 945 in 1991, 962 in 1981 and 976 in 1961 (the norm, sans female discrimination, is 950). The sex ratio at birth (males per 100 females) was estimated at 112 (the norm being 105), and there are some indications that it is improving slightly. India’s skewed sex ratio is due to increased female foeticide, neglect of the girl child and sex-selection abortion. There are indications that parts of India have long had a deficit of females.
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By Alexander Sanger, Chair, International Planned Parenthood Council

Somewhere in the universe, I am sure there is a planet where its inhabitants don’t use sex to reproduce, using instead artificial insemination, or cloning. We are not that planet.
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IPPF’s purchase of a new office home was featured in the New York Daily News on Jan 28, 2011. See:

http://bestplaces.nydailynews.com/stories/closer-flips-and-splits-new-yorks-real-estate-community

I will be giving a talk at the Owls Head Transportation Museum in Rockland, Maine on Saturday March 5 at 1pm on my other grandmother, Margery Durant. The title is

No Dearth on the Nile: Margery Durant Flies in Style to Africa

In 1932/33, Margery Durant conducted an air-popularization tour of the Mediterranean and Africa. Recount her travels with her grandson, Alexander Sanger as he shares the family’s pictures and film from the tour.

I am mentioned in this week’s New York Magazine feature on the 50th anniversary of the Pill: http://nymag.com

Alexander Sanger, Chair International Planned Parenthood Council

Today’s announcement by the Vatican that its parishioners can use condoms to prevent the spread of HIV/AIDS is an historic step forward. We welcome the Roman Catholic Church to the 21st Century.
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Today we visited Colombiaton, a new settlement on the outskirts of Cartagena, built to relieve the overcrowding of the refugee camps. The school we visited was new and spotless with a large playground. We attended a workshop on violence for Profamilia peer educators. The new wrinkle today was that Profamilia had asked 1200 students in Cartagena whom they wanted to hear from on this topic and other reproductive health issues. Out came a long list of movie and music stars. Profamilia contacted them, and many agreed to be spokespeople and to appear at events in schools. Today Tony Cruz and Johnny Legendario, rap stars, were scheduled to appear at the school.
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Today we visited the Nelson Mandela Displaced Persons Settlement in Cartagena. Colombia has the dubious distinction of having, after the Sudan, the greatest number of displaced persons. These are refugees from the endemic violence that has wracked this country for years. In Cartagena, a city of a million, there are about 65-70,000 refugees, mostly in two main settlements. The Nelson Mandela settlement has dirt roads, steep hills, jerry-built huts, little electricity, no running water and no sewage system.
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Today we visited Pasa Nuevo, a small fishing village with unpaved roads on the Caribbean coast, to see the Profamilia mobile brigade in action. We traveled down a dirt road for several miles to access the village, which has maybe 1,000 inhabitants. The Profamilia social workers had visited houses in the surrounding area for the previous two weeks to let the inhabitants know that they would be in town. Women traveled to see us from a two hour radius. Profamilia visits Pasa Nuevo every six months, this being the limit of the birth control pills and injections. (they leave behind enough supplies for six months).
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