8 Summary of Week 2
Figure 25 A mother and her newborn child, beneficiaries of a UK-funded maternal health and family planning programme in Orissa, one India's poorest states.
This week you have looked over the politics, ideas and history that have shaped the lottery of birth in the past and in the present.
You have also looked at how parental choices are made by individuals within the wider political, social and cultural contexts that shape their lives. Nation states, both pro-natalist and anti-natalist, will continue to influence birth choices and outcomes and influence the lottery of birth for good or ill.
In Week 3 you will consider what is being done worldwide to address birth inequalities. Equality is our ideal but people are still born, live and die in radical inequality. We look at progress made and changes underway, particularly in the lives of girls and women around the world.