Skip to main content Accessibility help

We use cookies to distinguish you from other users and to provide you with a better experience on our websites. Close this message to accept cookies or find out how to manage your cookie settings.

Close cookie message
×
Hostname: page-component-cd9895bd7-q99xh Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-12-26T04:06:28.769Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false

9 - Birth Control and Reproductive Rights in the Modern World

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  26 April 2024

By
Darshi Thoradeniya
Edited by
Merry E. Wiesner-Hanks  and
Mathew Kuefler
Merry E. Wiesner-Hanks
Affiliation:
University of Wisconsin, Milwaukee
Mathew Kuefler
Affiliation:
San Diego State University
Get access

Summary

This chapter attempts to explore global trajectories of birth control, family planning, and reproductive health and rights discourses in the modern world by comparing experiences of countries in the Global South with the Global North. Women all over the world have long had some control over their reproductive bodies. “Planning” became a very crucial concept within the global development discourse put forward during the post Second World War. One of the main resources that needed to be planned was population, thus “family planning” emerged as a novel form of population control. This ideology was supported by philanthropic institutions such as the Rockefeller Foundation and the International Planned Parenthood Federation, and by international conferences on population and development. Sri Lanka was a colony of the Western powers for four centuries (1505-1948), then a development “model” for South Asia in the 1970s, then the site of a civil war (1983-2009). Sri Lanka offers a more inclusive conceptual framework to understand how policy decisions taken in the Global North fails to have the same impact in the Global South. This chapter shows how policies must adapt to the local realities of the Global South irrespective of ratifying global population and development conventions.

Keywords

birth controlcontraceptionpopulationSri Lankafamily planningreproductive healthreproductive rightsdevelopmentglobal Northglobal South
Type
Chapter
Information
The Cambridge World History of Sexualities , pp. 183 - 203
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
Print publication year: 2024

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

References

Further Reading

Ahulwalia, S. Reproductive Restraints: Birth Control in India, 1877–1947. Champaign, IL: University of Illinois Press, 2008.Google Scholar
Bashford, Alison, and Levine, Philippa, eds. The Oxford Handbook of the History of Eugenics. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2010.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Birn, Anne-Emanuelle, and López, Raúl Necochea, eds. Peripheral Nerve: Health and Medicine in Cold War Latin America. Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 2020.Google Scholar
Bloomer, Fiona, Pierson, Claire, and Claudio, Sylvia Estrada, eds. Reimagining Global Abortion Politics: A Social Justice Perspective. Bristol: Bristol University Press, 2019.Google Scholar
Burton, Antoinette, ed. Gender, Sexuality and Colonial Modernities. London: Routledge, 1999.Google Scholar
Chatterjee, Partha. The Nation and Its Fragments: Colonial and Postcolonial Histories. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1993.Google Scholar
Connelly, Matthew. Fatal Misconception: The Struggle to Control World Population. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2008.Google Scholar
Cook, Rebecca J., Erdman, Joanna N., and Dickens, Bernard M., eds. Abortion Law in Transnational Perspective: Cases and Controversies. Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2014.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Corea, Gena. The Mother Machine: Reproductive Technologies from Artificial Insemination to Artificial Wombs. New York: Harper & Row, 1985.Google Scholar
David, H. P., ed. From Abortion to Contraception: A Resource to Public Policies and Reproductive Behavior in Central and Eastern Europe from 1917 to the Present. Westport, CT: Greenwood, 1999.Google Scholar
Gurr, Barbara. Reproductive Justice: The Politics of Health Care for Native American Women. New Brunswick, NJ: Rutgers University Press, 2015.Google Scholar
Hartman, Betsy. Reproductive Rights and Wrongs: The Global Politics of Population Control. Boston: South End, 1995.Google Scholar
Hodges, Sarah. Contraception, Colonialism and Commerce: Birth Control in South India 1920–1940. London: Routledge, 2017.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Hodges, S., ed. Reproductive Health in India: History, Politics, Controversies. New Delhi: Orient BlackSwan, 2006.Google Scholar
Klausen, S. M. Race, Maternity, and the Politics of Birth Control in South Africa, 1910–1939. London: Palgrave Macmillan, 2004.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Livi-Bacci, Massimo. A Concise History of World Population, 5th ed. Malden, MA: Wiley-Blackwell, 2012.Google Scholar
Marks, Lara. Sexual Chemistry: A History of the Contraceptive Pill. New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 2001.Google Scholar
Petchesky, R. P. Global Prescriptions: Gendering Health and Human Rights. London: Zed Books, 2003.Google Scholar
Petchesky, R. P., and Judd, Karen, eds. Negotiating Reproductive Rights: Women’s Perspectives across Countries and Cultures. London: Zed Books, 1998.Google Scholar
Rahnema, Majid, and Bowtree, Victoria, eds. The Post-Development Reader. London: Zed Books, 1997.Google Scholar
Rao, Mohan, From Population Control to Reproductive Health: Malthusian Arithmetic. New Delhi: Sage, 2004.Google Scholar
Rao, Mohan, and Sexton, Sarah, eds. Markets and Malthus: Population, Gender and Health in Neo-Liberal Times. New Delhi: Sage, 2010.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Rusterholz, Caroline. Women’s Medicine: Sex, Family Planning and British Female Doctors in Transnational Perspective, 1920–70. Manchester: Manchester University Press, 2020.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Seltzer, J. R. The Origins and Evolution of Family Planning Programs in Developing Countries. New York: Rockefeller Foundation, 2002.Google Scholar
Simon-Kumar, Rachel. Marketing Reproduction: Political Rhetoric and Gender Policy in India. New Delhi: Zubaan, 2006.Google Scholar
Sujatha, V., and Abraham, L., eds. Medical Pluralism in Contemporary India. Hyderabad: Orient BlackSwan, 2012.Google Scholar
Tone, Andrea. Devices and Desires: A History of Contraceptives in America. New York: Hill & Wang, 2001.Google Scholar
Vaughan, Paul. The Pill on Trial. London: Weidenfeld & Nicolson, 1970.Google Scholar
Whittaker, Andrea, ed. Abortion in Asia: Local Dilemmas and Local Politics. Oxford: Berghahn, 2010.Google Scholar

Save book to Kindle

To save this book to your Kindle, first ensure [email protected] is added to your Approved Personal Document E-mail List under your Personal Document Settings on the Manage Your Content and Devices page of your Amazon account. Then enter the ‘name’ part of your Kindle email address below. Find out more about saving to your Kindle.

Note you can select to save to either the @free.kindle.com or @kindle.com variations. ‘@free.kindle.com’ emails are free but can only be saved to your device when it is connected to wi-fi. ‘@kindle.com’ emails can be delivered even when you are not connected to wi-fi, but note that service fees apply.

Find out more about the Kindle Personal Document Service.

Available formats
×

Save book to Dropbox

To save content items to your account, please confirm that you agree to abide by our usage policies. If this is the first time you use this feature, you will be asked to authorise Cambridge Core to connect with your account. Find out more about saving content to Dropbox.

Available formats
×

Save book to Google Drive

To save content items to your account, please confirm that you agree to abide by our usage policies. If this is the first time you use this feature, you will be asked to authorise Cambridge Core to connect with your account. Find out more about saving content to Google Drive.

Available formats
×