We’re extremely saddened to share that Jane Roberts, who co-founded USA for UNFPA (formerly 34 Million Friends of UNFPA) with Lois Abraham, passed away at 84.
Jane dedicated her entire adult life to fighting for gender equality and improving access to reproductive health and education. In 1998, she joined the PLANET campaign, which urged Americans to support international family planning and reproductive health. It was during a PLANET campaign meeting in Washington, D.C. that Jane first met someone from UNFPA.
“One of the speakers was Abubakar Dungus, who was the Chief of Communications at UNFPA at the time. Quite simply I was hooked,” she shared with us during an Ask the Expert Q&A.
Four years later, when the U.S. government withdrew $34 million in funding from UNFPA, Jane knew that she couldn’t just sit back and watch as lifesaving reproductive care was cut around the world. She jumped into action—one dollar at a time.
“When George W. Bush withdrew funding in 2002, Lois Abraham and I, independently of each other, started asking 34 million Americans to donate just one dollar. Lois’ passion was obstetric fistulas and their surgical repair—mine was universal access to family planning and gender equality,” Jane shared with us for our 2024 Annual Report.
Thus, USA for UNFPA was born.
For more than a decade afterward, Jane dedicated herself to this grassroots effort, traveling to 35 states and speaking at over 60 colleges and universities, as well as at civic, law, environmental, women’s, church, and public health groups about USA for UNFPA and the importance of global reproductive health.
Jane’s efforts were an inspiration to the thousands of people she personally connected with and to thousands more she didn’t get to meet. Her work was chronicled in NYT reporter Nicholas Kristof’s book Half the Sky, and her articles and op-eds saw publications by organizations such as World Scientific. She also wrote and published 34 Million Friends of the Women of the World, a book about UNFPA’s work and the explosive grassroots movement she helped build. These efforts, along with many others, earned her a nomination for the Nobel Peace Prize’s 1000 Women in 2005.
But Jane didn’t work for notoriety or recognition—she worked to improve the lives of women and girls around the world.
“Personally, I received a good education. I was healthy. My husband and I fell in love and used family planning. I wasn’t afraid of dying in childbirth. I never suffered gender-based violence in any of its myriad forms.
No woman should have to experience those things. Education and health are the backbone of gender equality and UNFPA’s work. I saw this firsthand in Senegal and Mali when I visited UNFPA clinics there.
I am elated and proud to still be uplifting women and girls through USA for UNFPA. It is the way for good Americans to take a stand in these fraught times for women, for children, and for humanity.”
Jane’s incredible passion, intelligence, and wit will be deeply missed by everyone here at USA for UNFPA.
To read her full Ask the Expert interview, you can do so here.