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1. Family Planning - The Basics OverviewDefinitions:
- Family Planning
- has traditionally focused on the ability of individuals and couples to anticipate and attain their desired number of children, and the spacing and timing of their births. This is achieved through use of contraceptive methods and the treatment of involuntary infertility. This traditional definition of family planning is implicit in the mission of the federal Title X family planning program, “to provide individuals the information and means to exercise personal choice in determining the number and spacing of their children.”
- Reproductive health care
- was defined as: "the constellation of methods, techniques and services that contributes to reproductive health and well-being by preventing and solving reproductive health problems.”
The importance of “related reproductive health services” accompanying contraceptive services has evolved within the field of family planning, and expanded the scope of care.
The International Conference on Population and Development, held in Cairo, Egypt, in 1994, focused primarily on reproductive health defined as:
| "a state of complete physical, mental, and social well-being and not merely the absence of disease or infirmity in all matters relating to the reproductive system and to its functions and processes. Reproductive health therefore implies that people are able to have a satisfying and safe sex and that they have the capability to reproduce and the freedom to decide if, when and how often to do so…” |
Part of the above definition (“the capability to reproduce and the freedom to decide if, when and how often to do so…”) implies several essential principles that are fundamental in the field of family planning. The right of men and women:
- to be informed
- to have access to safe, effective,
affordable and acceptable methods of family planning of their choice
- to have access to methods of their choice for regulation of fertility which are not against the law; and
- to have access to appropriate health care services that will enable the women to go safely through pregnancy and childbirth and provide couples with the best chance of having a healthy infant
A shorter and simpler definition of family
planning that also incorporates reproductive health care is "to help individuals achieve their reproductive health intentions…".
This definition contains the fundamental principle: that individuals should voluntarily choose their own intentions. Therefore, it is essential that individuals have the following opportunities and resources:
- The opportunity and support to make informed and voluntary choices and decisions about sex, pregnancy, reproductive health, and contraception
- Access to health information for choices and decisions based on accurate and adequate information; and
- Access to services to achieve their “intentions”
- To practice safe and successful contraception
- To protect fertility; and
- To maintain reproductive health
For more information go to:
- Planned Parenthood of Wisconsin - Our History
- American Nurses Association's The Hall of Fame Inductees: Margaret H. Sanger
- OPA/Office of Family Planning
- World Health Organization's Reproductive Health
- PPFA's America's Family Planning Program: Title X
- Center for Reproductive Rights' Title X Family Planning
- WI DHFS Maternal and Child Health Home Page
Endnotes:
[II] Source: Global Policy Committee of the World Health Organization, 2 May 1994; and the WHO Position paper on health, Population and Development, Cairo 5-13 September 1994
http://www.who.int/health_topics/reproductive_health/en/
[III] Jain, A. and J. Bruce. :A Reproductive Health Approach to the Objectives and Assessment of Family Planning Programs. In Population Policies Reconsidered: Health, Empowerment, and Rights. Eds. Gita Sen, Adrienne Germain, and Linclon Chen. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1994. In Implications of Reproductive Health for the Design of Family Planning Services. George Brown, MD, MPH. The Population Council. http://www.popcouncil.org/pdfs/ebert/rephapproachfamplanning.pdf
[I] http ://opa.osophs.dhhs.gov/titlex/2001guidelines/2001_ofp_guidelines_complete.pdf
