Since 1957, we have worked to increase access to sexual and reproductive health and rights (SRHR) and promote healthy pregnancies. We are committed to expanding access to all methods of contraception, safe abortion, and postabortion care, while integrating services for HIV and cervical cancer within holistic sexual and reproductive health services. Taken together, our programs empower millions of women, men, and young people to choose their own paths forward.
From our long history advancing comprehensive SRHR, we know that delivering the highest quality services is critical for getting results. We also know that services may not always be sufficient on their own to yield the highest possible impact. In some settings the maximum success of even the best SRH service delivery is routinely constrained by forces that lie outside of a health facility (a weak national policy, for example), or even beyond the health sector (via social, political, or economic barriers). In exchange, poor SRHR status persistently stalls progress toward multiple other sustainable development goals.
We believe that if key health, social, environment, political, and economic systems—and the connections between them— are strengthened, this vicious cycle can be converted into a mutually beneficial one. And that a whole-systems view of comprehensive SRHR is what fully unleashes the power of women and girls to transform their lives, and change the world.
