Fraught Fertility:A Reappraisal of Feminist "Family Planning" Programs Abroad

The 1994 International Conference on Population and Development, held in Cairo, was a watershed moment in the history of family planning.   It was at this conference that overt talk of population control was essentially been verboten, and when the international family planning community rebranded itself as an empowerment tool, primarily focused on women’s health, rights and overall well-being.  But while the rhetorical shift away from population control has been successful, a substantive shift in policy and programs has been markedly less so. The historical antecedents of the family planning movement, from Malthusian thought, through eugenics, to development and population control and finally to the present concept of “reproductive health” have left a lasting impact on the movement’s values, priorities and activities that have been remarkably resilient, even as the movement itself has openly repudiated these.  As a result, a great deal of reproductive coercion is happening all over the world, promoting by programs and policies that shroud themselves in the progressive cloak of gender empowerment and women’s health.  Even many overtly feminist and purposefully progressive reproductive health programs and activists have been swept up in the low-fertility discourse.  In my talk, I will urge a reappraisal of the alliances between feminist activists and the development in the family planning sphere, and conclude with a brief discussion of the potential of reproductive justice to open new conceptual and programmatic avenues, re-centering the provision of contraception on women’s health, rights and well-being.