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Incarcerated women around the globe are predominantly of reproductive age. Most of these women have been pregnant before, and many want to be sexually active and avoid pregnancy upon release. Yet few of these women are on a regular method of contraception. Providing contraceptive services for women in custody benefits individual and public health goals of reducing unintended pregnancy. This policy briefing reviews evidence for an unmet need for family planning in the correctional setting, and policy implications for expanding services. The paper aims to discuss these issues.

The authors describe four model programs in the USA with established contraceptive services on site, highlighting practical steps other facilities can implement.

Correctional facilities health administrators, providers, advocates, and legislators should advance policies which should counsel women on family planning and should make a range of contraceptive methods available before release, while remaining sensitive to the potential pressure these women may feel to use birth control in this unique environment.

Family planning services for incarcerated women benefits individuals, facilities, and the community.

Policies which enable correctional facilities to provide comprehensive family planning to incarcerated women – including reproductive life goals counseling and contraceptive method provision – promote equity in access to critical reproductive health services and also provide broad scale population level benefits in preventing unintended pregnancy or enabling counseling for healthy pregnancies for a group of women who often have limited access to such services.

This policy briefing highlights an area of health care in prisons and jails which gets little attention in research and in policy circles: family planning services for incarcerated women. In addition to reviewing the importance of such services for this population, the authors also highlight model family planning programs in correctional facilities. These provide actionable insights for other administrators and providers.

This chapter explores the interaction between different kinds of knowledge and representations in the making of the ‘fleshed’ female reproductive body in an Indian city. In particular, it analyzes how women perceive contraception and how the reproductive governance helped to produce the female sterilization as the most widely used contraceptive method in India. The study is based on the case of the city of Bhuj, in the state of Gujarat (India), where three anthropological fieldworks (15 months) were conducted. Modern contraceptive methods are based on a biomedical representation of the body, drawn from Western categories of knowledge and experience, whereas women live the ‘fleshed’ reproductive body through local categories of substance and fluids. How is this knowledge mobilized and affected in relation to reproductive technologies and the government of reproduction? This question is addressed through the analysis of women's embodied experiences of contraception. The narratives collected show a resistance to biomedicine, considered to be a model that alters the female body and its reproductive capacity. Nevertheless, even when sterilization was considered to be a deliberate act of tampering with the functioning of their bodies, women displayed a pragmatic agency in choosing this method. The experiences of respondents reflected complex negotiations between bodily suffering, socio-economic structures and the microphysics of power surrounding them, rather than a unilateral submission to medical authority and reproductive governance.

The purpose of this paper is to determine the socio-religious factors associated with unmet need for family planning among married Rwandan women, and examine individual and contextual characteristics of married fecund women influencing their contraceptive use and future intentions to use contraception.

This study employed merge data, which were extracted from 2005, 2010, 2014–2015 Rwanda Demographic And Health Survey’s individual women data sets. Characteristics of married fecund women with unmet need for family planning were compared using Pearson’s χ² test. A binary logistic regression analysis was applied to examine the influence of socio-religious factors on contraceptive use, and future intentions to use contraception among married fecund women.

Unmet need for family planning among married Rwandan women has significantly decreased over the past decade, from 39.9 percent in 2005 to 19.5 percent in 2010 and 17.5 percent in 2015. Women who are Protestants, residing in rural area, and having five or more children were significantly more likely to have an unmet need for family planning. Overall, the likelihood of having unmet need for family planning, not using contraceptives and future intentions for not using contraception was found statistically high among Protestant women compared to Catholics and low-educated women.

Unmarried women and men are not included to examine their role play and characteristics influences on family planning use in Rwanda. Investing in education of girls should be a priority for the future, without that there will not be equality in reproductive health and rights. Factors behind the recent slow motion of family planning initiatives need to be addressed in order to meet the reproductive needs and rights of all women.

Public-religious collaboration to promote nationally Natural Family Planning in all healthcare facilities is extremely needed. Since the family planning initiatives have been recently very slow, investing in behavioral change programs through mass communication seems deliberately prudent.

Investing in behavioral change programs and promoting sexual and reproductive health education would improve women’s social well-being.

This is the first-ever effort to examine the influence of the socio-religious values on family planning use among Rwandan fecund women.

This chapter discusses various aspects of family planning initiatives on a global scale, with a specific focus on their influence in Asian contexts, including Bangladesh. This chapter examines the diverse range of family planning programs and policies implemented worldwide, in Asia and Bangladesh considering cultural factors that significantly shape family planning decisions. By highlighting the unique approaches and challenges faced in different regions, it provides valuable insights into the evolving landscape of family planning efforts and their impact on population dynamics.

Around one in five girls in Kenya, aged 15 to 19 years old are either pregnant or have given birth. Of 47 counties, adolescent pregnancy is highest in Narok, where about 40% of girls aged 15 to 19 years old have begun childbearing. This study aims to explore drivers to sexual activity, access to sexual and reproductive health (SRH) services and barriers to contraceptive use among adolescents in Narok County, Kenya to inform the design of SRH interventions and safeguard young people’s rights to sexual health.

A cross-sectional mixed methods study was conducted in December 2019. Quantitative data were collected through structured questionnaires among girls aged 15 to 19 years old who were either pregnant or had given birth and those who had not and boys aged 15 to 19 years old. Qualitative data were collected through focus group discussions with adolescent girls and boys and through structured key informant interviews with parents, community leaders and health workers.

The mean age at first sexual intercourse for both genders was 15 years. While the majority of girls and boys knew where to access SRH services, few used contraception during their last sexual activity. There was no significant difference in the condom or other contraceptive methods use between girls who had begun child bearing and those who had not (p = 0.549 and p = 0.563, respectively). Key drivers for sexual activity among young people were poverty and peer pressure. Cultural practices such as female genital mutilation and early marriage contributed to early sex. Community attitudes toward contraception discouraged young people from taking up contraceptives.

This mixed methods study explores the drivers of adolescent pregnancy in Narok, Kenya, the county with the highest rates of adolescent pregnancy; twice the national pregnancy rates. Understanding the drivers of pregnancy and the underlying human rights violations will help policymakers and health leaders to design interventions which will improve outcomes.

This chapter examines men’s involvement in birth control from a feminist political-economic perspective. Fertility, and hence women’s body, is still a focus of political struggles today. In the late 1990s, the international community of population policy recognized a concept of women’s reproductive rights and adopted a rights-based discourse in place of a language of economic efficiency. At the same time, they advocated for men’s participation in family planning and burden sharing between couples. This gender-sensitive new policy was effective in achieving more successful contraception in patriarchal societies where men are decision-makers in many aspects of social life. Yet, from a feminist perspective, such a policy could threaten women’s reproductive rights if gender relations remain patriarchal. A close examination of Turkey’s fertility decline suggests that the process was led by men who increasingly aspired to have small families which they could manage to look after as wage-earning fathers. In other words, it was realized without women’s empowerment. A case study of Kurdish women conducted in Eastern Turkey where fertility rate was significantly higher than the national average indicates a positive impact of men’s involvement on effective birth control. Yet this study also suggests a risk of undermining women’s empowerment and autonomy. The promotion of men’s involvement in family planning can reinforce men’s control over women’s bodies and endorse birth control without women’s empowerment again, unless it is consciously designed in the context of reproductive rights.

This chapter provides a comprehensive examination of the diverse strategies employed in various Asian regions to address family planning. Beginning with an in-depth analysis of family planning programs in South Asia, this chapter offers a comparative overview that highlights the unique characteristics and outcomes within this dynamic context. Furthermore, this chapter employs case studies to explore the multifaceted influences of religious beliefs, legal frameworks, and sociocultural factors on family planning practices. By delving into these complexities, it offers a nuanced understanding of the challenges and successes in different Asian regions. This comparative exploration equips policymakers and practitioners with valuable insights to inform more effective and culturally sensitive family planning initiatives.

Data from the National Survey of Family Growth suggest that poor women and women of color are more likely than privileged women to use long-lasting contraception such as sterilization, intrauterine devices (IUD), and Depo Provera. This disparity is noteworthy because long-lasting methods can and have been used coercively. To analyze this disparity, I constructed multivariate binary logistic regression models for female sterilization, IUD, and Depo Provera using the most recent National Survey of Family Growth available (Cycle 6, conducted by the National Center for Health Statistics (NCHS) in 2002). I examined the effect of both personal factors, including age, parity, and number of marriages, and social factors, including education and health coverage. Personal factors were strong predictors but could not explain racial and economic disparities that exist among contraceptive users. This analysis found that education and health coverage were also important variables. Even controlling for personal factors, women with less education were more likely to be sterilized or use Depo Provera than women with a bachelor's degree or more. Women covered by Medicaid or public, government, or military coverage were more likely to use Depo Provera than women with private insurance. Women covered by Medicaid were also more likely to be sterilized since 2000. And uninsured women were more likely to use an IUD than women with private health insurance. However, none of the independent variables completely erased the effect of race and income, suggesting further research is necessary to understand the disparity in use of long-lasting contraceptives.

Between 1965 and 1973 the percentage of married women practicing contraception in the United States increased from 64.2 to 69.9. This increase was accompanied by changing social values, increased information, and important technological innovations. The major technological innovations were the birth control pill and the Intrauterine Device (IUD), as well as new and safer techniques for female sterilization. The blossoming of private and public family planning programs in this period may also have been instrumental in the increased use of contraception.