Birth control is not an introduced phrase in the Papua New Guinean vocabulary, nor are birth control practices a new phenomenon to Papua New Guineans and were practiced long before white men set foot on the shores of PNG.

Unwanted pregnancies were dealt by women using more natural ways by using various herbs, tree barks or even physical means to terminate their pregnancies.

Some mothers even wait for their babies to be born before they discard, abandon or kill the baby because the termination methods most effective put them at risk of bleeding to death.

Most of the reasons for fearful actions are similar to today’s women’s reasons for going to that extreme and they include the mother is unmarried or simply tired of bearing children to hurtful ones such as the child is borne as a result of incest, rape or adultery.

In any situation, proposal or invention, there are always three types of people. Those who are headstrong supporters of it, those who are headstrong critics of it, and those who just simply agree that there is both good and bad consequences to it.

Like many other man-made products, the newly introduced birth control or contraceptives come with all three of the above and just like any man-made invention, they tend to benefit a number of people but also prove to be harmful to the rest.

Most Papua New Guinean women today solely undergo the new and introduced contraceptive methods such as the daily hormone pills, contraceptive implants and injections and the intra-urine devices or IUD’s for short.

The only one suitable for men is the male condoms although permanent birth control measures such as vasectomy for men and tubal litigation for women are at their disposal but may not be a hundred percent effective.

Of course, in terms of governance wise,population control advocates will say that it is much easier to cater for a slowly growing population with fairly even age distribution rather than a rapidly growing one with a disproportionate number of children.

Perhaps birth control and contraception is regarded by most developing countries as the most important tool in the development tool box, Papua New Guinea included, but isn’t our country still struggling to educate all our children, create jobs for our young people and provide important services and infrastructures?

Maybe having access to this contraceptives might not be important so as much as much need hygiene and sanitation, access to clean water, better education and improved health care or so much so as road access to link the most rural population to access missed out services.

In another light, the one argument able to withstand the ton of negatives associated birth control contraceptives is the fear of a hard to manage population growth, community entrapment and state failure with relation to famine, disease or war.

In ending, the inevitable has occurred but it is now up to the contraceptive agents, the government and the parents, churches and individuals, respectively to not omit moral issues of contraceptives, strive for a healthy society acknowledging the citizens’ uncertainty and to help build strong moral character to become role models especially for the young people.

Amanda Kundil