There are about 214 million women around the world who want to avoid pregnancy but don’t have access to contraception, according to the United Nations Population Fund (UNFPA). Addressing this unmet need is part of the inspiration for the theme of this year's World Population Day on Tuesday: "family planning."

There is special power in hearing about the importance of fighting malaria from someone who contracted it as a child. There is added weight when arguing for continued funding of ARV (anti-retroviral) drugs if the argument is made by a Ugandan who was orphaned by AIDS.

Trump budget cuts to U.S. foreign aid: The program that would be hit hardest would be family planning. The U.S. currently spends $607.5 million per year to provide women in poor countries with birth control and reproductive healthcare. Trump appears to want to zero that out entirely. His budget proposal explicitly calls for eliminating the largest source of this funding: $524 million disbursed by USAID, stating that the cut "achieves further savings" to the budget.

Physical poverty exists across the world. Spiritual poverty exists throughout our hearts. One is connected to the other. Paying close attention to the practical needs of people here on earth is the open door to surrendering the need of our souls to God in heaven. So how we love each other, exhibited in how we treat each other, in the here and now will impact us for eternity.

The administration’s proposal, announced Tuesday, to slash approximately 30 percent from the State Department and foreign assistance budget signals an American retreat, leaving a vacuum that would make us far less safe and prosperous. While it may sound penny-wise, it is pound-foolish.

Every woman who has been pregnant can remember that moment when you come to understand that you harbor a new life inside your own body. A life for which you are responsible. It is the first day of the first 1,000 days which may be the most important for both you and your child in terms of the potential of that child living a long, healthy life. It's your first day of motherhood. This can be an equally frightening and exciting day.

As members of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, we often are confronted with the question of how the United States should respond to such crises. We also have the opportunity to visit countries near and far on behalf of the American people to assess the effectiveness of programs. Yet in our travels around the world, neither of us had experienced anything like we did when we entered the Bidi Bidi refugee camp in Uganda last month.

Approximately 48 million women per year do not have a skilled attendant, such as a midwife, nurse, or physician, at their birth. While the proportion of births in developing regions attended by skilled personnel rose from 55% to 65% between 1990 and 2009, this still leaves 1 in 3 women who gives birth without a skilled attendant present to help her. This is in stark comparison to developed regions where 99% of women giving birth have 1 or more skilled attendants with them throughout their labor and birth. Today more than 2 million women give birth each year with no one else present: no skilled birth attendant, no family, no friends.

Tuesday, April 25, is World Malaria Day. Malaria is an infectious disease claiming the lives of now 429,000 people each year – mostly children. Living in the South most of my life, I am all too familiar with the annoyance of mosquitos, especially in the evening. But I cannot begin to imagine what it would be like to live with mosquitoes beyond annoyance; an insect bite that might mean the death of my sweet little boy. Millions of mothers and fathers face that fear around the globe year after year, whereby malaria claims the life of one child every two minutes.