TY - JOUR
T1 - From population control to reproductive health
T2 - An emerging policy agenda
AU - Lane, Sandra D.
N1 - Funding Information:
Since the mid-1960st he United States has allocated over $4 billion for population activities in developing countries, largely through USAID [107].T he greatest proportion of this assistanceh as been for providing contraceptives, strengthening family planning programs and indigenous institutions devoted to population activities. and improving the collection and evaluation of demographic data. Indonesia, Thailand, Bangladesh. Mexico and Egypt have all experienced significant fertility declines in the past decade [107, 1231.a great deal of which can be credited to USAID support. United States governmental activities in population and reproductive health are often constrained by domestic political concerns. For example. in 1991 Louis Sullivan, then U.S. Secretary of Health and Human Services. withdrew NIH funding from two large studies on sexuality. one on adolescents exuality and one on adult sexuality, in part becauset he studies were opposed by Senator Jesse Helms and Reprcsen-tative William Dannemeyer [ 124. 1251I.n 1984,a t an international conference on family planning in Mexico City, the United States issued a Reagan administration policy stating that the U.S. would no longer contribute to the family planning programs of countries in which abortion was one of the methods offered and would no longer fund NGOs that performed or promoted abortion [126]. Because of this policy. U.S. funding was withdrawn from the United Nations Population Fund and IPPF. This policy was reversed by the Clinton administration in 1993 [127]. Despite the weight of bureaucracy and constraints of politically motivated policies, innovative reproductive health research is being produced by the staff ol fcdcral agencies. For example. Cynthia Ferre, Epi-dcmiologist of the Centers for Disease Control and Prcvcntion, is the Project Officer on two ethnographic studies of African-American women’s pregnancy and childbirth expcricnccs [IX]. The CDC contra&d with Susan Scrimshaw. Professor and Associate Dean of the School of Public Health at the University 01 California at Los Angclcs. to lcad one of theses tudies [129]. Ferre and her colleagues at CDC realized that there continues to be ;I persistent gap in infant mortality. maternal morbidity and mortality. birth weight. and other mcasurcs of health between African-Americans and others in the United States. They felt that the known risk factors largely dctno-graphic variables such as age. socioeconomic status. occupation and education---did not fully account for the differences. The CDC staff brought togcthci a collaborative group. of academics. activists and African-American community leaders. to help dc-v,clop a new research agenda. The study designed by Scrimshaw and her colleagues. within the framework worked out by the CDC. is important in that it attempts to understand the intraethnic diversity in the African-American community, rather than looking at ‘race’ as a homogeneous variable. The use of ethnographic methods and community participation is part of an eIfort to generatea new set of hypothesesa bout and to better understand the contexts which lead African-American women and their Infants to experience disparities in health outcome. The advjantageso f a collaboration such as has taken place in this study are that:
Copyright:
Copyright 2014 Elsevier B.V., All rights reserved.
PY - 1994/11
Y1 - 1994/11
N2 - This article reviews the background to the current debates between advocates of population control and reproductive health as frameworks for national and international health policies. Population control has been a dominant metaphor in international family planning programs since the 1960s. Population control has frequently meant pursuing a single-minded goal of fertility limitation, often without sufficient attention to the rights of family planning clients. This narrow focus has led to some coercive policies, numerous ethical violations, and ineffective family planning programs. In the last decade there has been the beginning of a policy shift, advocated by a growing number of activists and researchers in women's health, from population control to reproductive health. A reproductive health framework would provide a broader programmatic focus that could bring needed attention to such issues as sexually transmitted diseases, infertility, abortion, reproductive cancers and women's empowerment generally.
AB - This article reviews the background to the current debates between advocates of population control and reproductive health as frameworks for national and international health policies. Population control has been a dominant metaphor in international family planning programs since the 1960s. Population control has frequently meant pursuing a single-minded goal of fertility limitation, often without sufficient attention to the rights of family planning clients. This narrow focus has led to some coercive policies, numerous ethical violations, and ineffective family planning programs. In the last decade there has been the beginning of a policy shift, advocated by a growing number of activists and researchers in women's health, from population control to reproductive health. A reproductive health framework would provide a broader programmatic focus that could bring needed attention to such issues as sexually transmitted diseases, infertility, abortion, reproductive cancers and women's empowerment generally.
KW - health policy
KW - population
KW - reproductive health
KW - women's health
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U2 - 10.1016/0277-9536(94)90362-X
DO - 10.1016/0277-9536(94)90362-X
M3 - Article
C2 - 7801167
AN - SCOPUS:0028166358
SN - 0277-9536
VL - 39
SP - 1303
EP - 1314
JO - Ethics in Science and Medicine
JF - Ethics in Science and Medicine
IS - 9
ER -