Global family planning policies may incentivize health care providers to coerce women into adopting contraceptive services they don’t fully understand or want, according to a new study in the journal Social Science & Medicine.
Study author Leigh Senderowicz, SD ’19, of the University of Wisconsin-Madison, conducted the qualitative research while a doctoral student at Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health. She interviewed 49 women of reproductive age in an anonymized sub-Saharan African country, who reported a variety of coercive experiences regarding their use of contraception. For example, some women said that providers threatened to deny them future care if they didn’t use a particular contraceptive method. Others reported going to a clinic to request the removal of contraceptive implants, but the providers refused.
Senderowicz suggested that the providers’ coercive actions are a result of trying to meet global health targets that set numerical goals for the number of family planning users in the country. The results suggest the need for a “radical reconceptualization of family planning goals and measurements,” Senderowicz wrote.