Population Connection Member Profile: Eric Hirst
Eric Hirst has been a supporter of ZPG/Population Connection since 1979, and he’s also a member of our President’s Circle and ZPG Society. Eric has had an interesting life—and an especially peripatetic one. He lived in New York City, upstate New York, Alabama, Tennessee, and the Bay Area before finally landing in the Seattle area. […]
‘Under the Open Sky:’ Two Activists Aim to Reshape Nepal’s Youth Reproductive Health Landscape
At first glance, Sajja Singh and Riju Dhakal could be fellow students in your college Zoom seminar. You may not immediately suspect that they lead a nationwide youth empowerment and advocacy organization in Nepal, or that one of them is the first female president of the organization. Singh, the former Vice President of YUWA, and […]
Ten Population and Environment Connections
Human caused environmental changes, while felt everywhere, manifest differently by location. A forest you once explored on the periphery of New York State’s Adirondack Park may have large clearings from decreased fracking regulations—a relic from the Trump administration. You may have been ordered to evacuate your coastal home on the Gulf of Mexico in the […]
Digital Capitol Hill Days 2021 Goes Above and Beyond!
The pandemic has drastically elucidated the vast inequities within the global public health sphere, particularly crippling access to comprehensive reproductive health care. Our commitment to fighting for reproductive rights and health- albeit digitally-remains unwavering. With a year of virtually gathering experience under our belt, we approached our annual advocacy event, Capitol Hill Days, with innovation […]
Amplifying Voices From the Global South
As a U.S.-based organization dedicated to stabilizing global population, we recognize our responsibility to amplify the voices of people from the Global South—people who live daily with the causes and consequences of rapid population growth. At the time of our founding as Zero Population Growth, or ZPG, more than 50 years ago, American women had, […]
Publication Notes: March 2021 Magazine Issue
The March 2021 issue of Population Connection magazine is live online today, and hard copies have already started arriving in mailboxes. This issue is a celebration of the change in presidential administration and the new reproductive health-supporting Congress and what this new representation in Washington, DC, means for the family planning programs that help women […]
Making Population Connections in Our Crowded, Hectic World
We don’t talk about population issues to a classroom of fifth-graders the same way we would at a retirement community—although our core population stabilization message is always there. Closing gaps between what we intend to say and what others may hear requires an understanding of what others bring to the table. It’s still common to […]
Don’t Let the “COVID-19 Baby Bust” Alarm You
Apparently, there’s a “COVID-19 Baby Bust” happening in the United States, and it’s dooming our country to economic challenges for years to come. Or at least that’s what some economists would have us believe. In the past week, news outlets from CBS to The New York Times to the Wall Street Journal have covered this […]
President of Turimiquire Foundation Confirms the Difficult State of Family Planning in Venezuela
Population Connection member and friend Steven Bloomstein wrote the following letter to the editor of The New York Times, in response to its Feb. 20, 2021, article “Venezuelan Women Lose Access to Contraception, and Control of Their Lives.” It wasn’t picked up for publication, so we’re sharing it here! As a U.S. citizen who has […]
International Women’s Day—Looking Toward Gender Equity
Today is International Women’s Day. It’s also the day my late grandmother would have turned 111. I always thought it was fitting that she shared her special day with the day meant to celebrate and lift up all women because she was one of the toughest old ladies I’ve ever met (she was 70 when […]