Further reactions to Blake and Das Gupta's "the fallacy of the five million women: a re-estimate".

This article comments on an article related to fallacy of five million women by Judith Blake and Prithwis Das Gupta, published in a previous issue of the journal "Demography." The re-estimate of the needful population by Blake and Das Gupta represents a significant methodological advance over earlier efforts. The total estimated population of poor and near-poor women were disaggregated by age, marital status, religion and color. This is necessary as there are known fertility and contraceptive behavioral variations within and between these subgroups. The basis for deduction of women with negative attitudes toward family limitation is more problematic. In summary the use of data on ATC as the basis of excluding women from those needing contraceptive services should be viewed with some concern. While the collection of attitudinal data can be justified in the interest of studying non-behavioral dimensions of human society, its use by Blake and Das Gupta goes beyond the legitimate purpose of the original survey.