Kudos to Jonathan Kaiman and Sunshine de Leon for covering the horror of the the Philippines’ 1.8 million abandoned children. Many of these kids live in squalid and unsafe conditions, hoping to find the family they deserve. Kaiman and de Leon are right to focus on the country’s dismal adoption policies and a system that locks children away from the families who want them. But it’s not enough to shake our heads at the symptoms of a larger problem. Instead, we need to find the cause. We have to look further back, at the Philippines’ notorious failure to provide access to contraceptives and reproductive health services. How many women were forced to have children when they didn’t want them? Preventing abandoned children starts with providing access to family planning services. That’s part of the Having Kids model.