Susanne Schultz & Daniel Bendix
Fall 2015
Series Number: 89
Editor’s note: It has been over three years since the 2012 London Summit on Family Planning. We are now witnessing its aftermath: targeted family planning projects aimed at 120 million women in the Global South. Some of these projects—like public-private partnerships between high-profile donors, pharmaceutical companies, governments and NGOs—emphasize long-acting reversible contraception (LARC) over other methods. LARC provision has become big business, with big impacts on women’s health. Pharmaceutical companies are expanding LARC distribution, bankrolled by development agencies and donors with deep pockets. This mass dissemination of LARC is taking place with little critical scrutiny from health activists. In this DifferenTakes, Susanne Schultz and Daniel Bendix trace the efforts by the German government, the pharmaceutical company Bayer, the population lobby, and the Gates Foundation to promote the hormonal contraceptive implant Jadelle. The authors conclude with a call for activists to fight for contraceptive safety, in the spirit of earlier challenges to implants, like Norplant.
