Family Planning

A groundbreaking new book on American policy & human fertility control which reviews & analyzes policies & practices over the last thirty years in each of the fifty states. Arguing that morality politics has helped make fertility policies contentious & complex, McFarlane & Meier conclude that current policies are inadequate for addressing unintended pregnancies & even contribute to high abortion rates. The authors offer alternative public policy designed to be more effective in the future.

This work presents a forceful argument for a more responsive approach to fertility limitation in developing countries--one that builds on women's concerns about their survival and security and strengthens women's rights. Dixon-Mueller reviews the history of the debate between feminists and the birth control movement, examines the forces affecting U.S. population policy on the domestic and international fronts, and documents the relationship between women's reproductive rights and their rights in other areas.

Results of interviewed legislative directors.

This book analyzes the origins and rationale of family planning programs and how they have evolved based on experience in different country settings.

Contraception is an issue of considerable concern to a great many heterosexually active people. Yet the impact of contraceptive technologies in the world today, in particular their implications for kinship, gender relations, and other aspects of social life, receives relatively little scholarly attention.This book brings a new perspective to the study of contraception, by collecting together in one volume leading experts in the fields of contraception, family planning and reproductive health. Contributors look at the social, economic, political and cultural contexts in which contraceptive providers and recipients make decisions about whether and what forms of contraception to use. User perspectives (whether those of recipients or providers of contraceptive services) are taken seriously, as are the perspectives of policy-makers and development experts. With its in-depth, case-study approach, this challenging book will appeal to practitioners and planners in the fields of family planning and reproductive health, as well as to students and academics of applied and medical anthropology, health studies, gender and development studies, or anyone interested in the social, cultural and ethical issues raised by contraceptive technologies.

This book presents the work of the "Sacred Choices Initiative" of the Religious Consultation on Population, Reproductive Health, and Ethics. The purpose of this Packard and Ford Foundation supported initiative is to attempt to change international discourse on family planning and to rescue this debate from superficial sloganeering by drawing on the moral stores of the world's major and indigenous religions. In many of the world's religions there is a restrictive and pro-natalist view on family planning, and this is one legitimate reading of those religious traditions. As the essays in this volume demonstrate, however, this is not the only legitimate or orthodox view. These authors show that the paramaters of orthodoxy are wider and gentler than that, and that the great religious traditions are wiser and more variegated and nuanced than a simple repetition of the most conservative views would suggest. This theme is carried out in essays on each of the world's major religious traditions, written by scholar practitioners of those faiths.

""Making Modern Mothers explores the ethics of reproductive agency and the changing meanings of motherhood in modern Greece where abortion is still more widely practiced than modern contraception, and having children represents a woman's social-moral achievement. In this very readable ethnography, Paxson analyzes how urban women manage their reproductive and sexual lives, and make sense both of being women and of being mothers. This is a welcome addition to a growing comparative literature."--Gail Kligman, author of "The Politics of Duplicity: Controlling Reproduction in Ceausescu's Romania

"Whether addressing abortion, family planning, or pronatalist population policy, Paxson has perfect pitch, grounding these issues in women's stories, concerns, and dilemmas as they seek to achieve and embody a sense of modern Greek femininity."--Faye Ginsburg, author of "Contested Lives "

"An arresting book. . . . It is a powerful commentary on the cultural specificities of morality in the modern world."--Michael Herzfeld, author of "Cultural Intimacy "

"A fascinating study. Paxson's focus on ethics allows her to explain why individuals' efforts to be good women, mothers, doctors, and citizens can lead to counterintuitive results, such as high rates of abortion in a country where most women aspire to motherhood and politicians decry the low birth rate."--Jane F. Collier, author of "From Duty to Desire: Remaking Families in a Spanish Village