EngenderHealth

EngenderHealth is a nonprofit organization based in New York, internationally active in contraception, HIV/AIDS, gender equity, obstetric fistula, sterilization, and other sexual and reproductive health (SRH) issues in 40 developing countries around the world^[1].

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Mission statement

From its web site: "EngenderHealth works to improve the health and well-being of people in the poor communities of the world. We do this by sharing our expertise in sexual and reproductive health and transforming the quality of health care. We promote gender equity, advocate for sound practices and policies, and inspire people to assert their rights to better, healthier lives. Working in partnership with local organizations, we adapt our work in response to local needs."

History

In the course of its existence, EngenderHealth went through numerous name-changes, reflecting internal debate, changing policies and adaptation to evolutions in public opinion.

It was founded by Marion Stephenson Olden (née Norton), an eugenic-minded social worker, in 1937 as the Sterilization League of New Jersey (SLNJ) with the purpose "to aid in the preparation, promotion, enactment and enforcement of legislative measures designed to provide for the improvement of the human stock by the selective sterilization of the mentally defective and of those afflicted with inherited or inheritable physical disease".^[2]

Encouraged by the eugenic sterilization legislation enacted by Georgia in 1937, the SLNJ lobbied intensely, although unsuccessfully, between 1939 and 1942 for the passage of a state sterilization law in New Jersey and conducted an educational program of publications and exhibits designed to promote sterilization.

In January, 1943, the League was renamed Sterilization League For Human Betterment and decided to expand her activities nationwide. After objections from relatives of Ezra Gosney, founder of the Human Betterment Foundation, the name was changed again to Birthright, Inc.: a national, non profit, educational organization with the aim of promoting "all reliable and scientific means for improving the biological stock of the human race".^[3] When the Human Betterment Foundation was desolved in 1943, its promotional activities for eugenic sterilization were continued through Birthright, which received most of the Foundation's records regarding its work on sterilization programs and also the (financial) support of such past Foundation-backers as C.M. Goethe, Paul Popenoe and Lois Gosney Castle, who had succeeded her father in 1942 as head of the Foundation.^[4]

After the Second World War, when the full scale of the Nazi eugenics program became apparent, organizations and persons promoting eugenic sterilization felt pressure to change their advocacy. This was also true for Birthright, which after internal debate shifted to promoting voluntary sterilization as a measure to alleviate social problems and condemned (legislative) compulsion when it came to sterilization.^[5][6]

The Manhattan studio at the New York Academy of Medicine of Robert Latou Dickinson, who was a member since 1943 and became the first chairman of the AVS Medical and Scientific Committee in 1949, served as a new headquarter in 1950. That same year, Birthright was renamed the Human Betterment Association of America (HBAA), and in 1962 its name was changed to the Human Betterment Association for Voluntary Sterilization (HBAVS).

Although the organization managed to attract a number of prominent scientists and activists, its influence soared when in 1964 Hugh Moore, the fabulously rich inventor of the Dixie Cup and noted population controller, threw his influence and money behind the group. Apart from financial support, Moore served as president from 1964 to 1969. Under his presidency it was renamed the Association for Voluntary Sterilization (AVS) in 1965.^[5]

In the early 1970s AVS and its allies in the family planning movement launched an intense campaign to promote sterilization. This led in 1971 to the decision of politicians and officials at Office for Equal Opportunity to pay for sterilizations for low-income Americans and the changing policy of most health insurance plans to pay for sterilization operations. Concurrently AVS launched—together with the ACLU and Zero Population Growth—"Operation Lawsuit": a series of successful lawsuits against various U.S. hospitals for refusing to comply with patients' requests for sterilization. Results of these campaigns were an increasingly widespread acceptance in the medical profession that sterilization was purely a matter between patients and their physicians and an effective birth control method, which in its turn made it possible for the Association to shift its focus to medical research.^[3]

In the same period, AVS focused increasingly on the international scene. In the changing atmosphere of late sixties and early seventies, when the importance of population control and family planning in the Third World for US foreign policy was being stressed, AVS became in 1972 for the first time the recipient of funding from the U.S. Agency for International Development (USAID). In its subsequent international activities, the Association became instrumental in the widespread acceptance and utilization of sterilization as the best weapon in the battle to curtail Third World fertility. It is in large part due to its pioneering work, that sterilization is the most prevalent method of contraception worldwide.^[7]

AVS was renamed the Association for Voluntary Surgical Contraception (AVSC) in 1984, changed its name to AVSC International in 1994 and finally to EngenderHealth in 2001. Today, its programs have expanded to include HIV/AIDS reduction, treating obstetric fistula, reducing gender-based violence, and many other issues related to maternal, sexual and reproductive health.

In 2002 EngenderHealth won the United Nations Population Award as recognition of the agency's contribution to family planning and reproductive health care in resource-poor countries.^[7] And in 2006, at the XVI International AIDS Conference, EngenderHealth was one of twenty-five finalists nominated for the Red Ribbon Award: Celebrating Community Leadership and Action on AIDS. This was in recognition of its work through the South Africa branch of its Men As Partners® program to engage men in HIV/AIDS prevention and reducing gender-based violence.

Prominent members

• Margaret Sanger, birth control activist.
• Robert Latou Dickinson, gynecologist and sex researcher.
• Alan Guttmacher, American physician.
• Joseph Fletcher, pioneer in the field of bioethics.
• John Rock, one of the inventors of the birth control pill.
• Paul R. Ehrlich, entomologist and author on the subject of human overpopulation.
• Brock Chisholm, first director-general of the World Health Organization and honorary president to the AVS in the early 1960s.
• Paul Blanshard, American journalist.
• Harry Emerson Fosdick, American clergyman.
• Hugh Moore, American enterpreneur.

See also

• UNFPA
• USAID
• IPPF
• Family Health International
• Pathfinder International
• Population Council
• Americans for UNFPA

Sources

1. ^ EngenderHealth 2005 Annual Report
2. ^ Constitution and Platform of the Sterilization League of New Jersey. Special Collections and University Archives, Rutgers University Libraries. Retrieved on 2006-11-06.
3. ^ ^{a b} Historical note to the Association for Voluntary Sterilization Records. Social Welfare History Archives, University of Minnesota. Retrieved on 2006-11-07.
4. ^ Valone, David (2003-11-16). "Foundations, Eugenic Sterilization, and the Emergence of the World Population Control Movement". Philanthropic Foundations and the Globalization of Scientific Medicine and Public Health. Retrieved on 2006-11-08. 
5. ^ ^{a b} Dowbiggin, Ian (2006-06-01). "Reproductive Imperialism: Sterilization and Foreign Aid in the Cold War". Globalization, Empire, and Imperialism in Historical Perspective. Retrieved on 2006-08-02. 
6. ^ Jezowski, Terrence; Rachael Pine. EngenderHealth at 60. EngenderHealth. Retrieved on 2006-12-12.
7. ^ ^{a b} United Nations (2001-07-01). "Secretary-General praises winners of annual UN Population Award for 'outstanding contributions to the betterment of our world'". Press release. Retrieved on 2006-11-11.

Further reading

• Van Essendelft, William R. "Association for Voluntary Sterilization." in Social Service Organizations, edited by Peter Romanefsky. London: Greenwood Press, 1978.