The proportion of married women in the developing world who do not use contraceptives even though they wish to space births or limit childbearing decreased from 19% to 17% between 1996 and 2000, according to "Unmet Need for Contraception in the Developing World and the Former Soviet Union: An Updated Estimate." In the analysis, published in the September 2002 issue of International Family Planning Perspectives, authors John A. Ross and William L. Winfrey of The Futures Group attribute this decline to growing contraceptive use. However, they emphasize that millions of women still lack protection against unwanted pregnancies: taking into account unmarried women and women living in the former Soviet Union, 122.7 million women have an "unmet need" for contraception.
The other articles in this issue of International Family Planning Perspectives also deal with the avoidance of unplanned pregnancies and births—how mass media campaigns can be used to reach broad audiences with family planning messages, what women do to control their fertility when access to contraceptives is limited and how postabortion counseling can be used to encourage contraceptive use among abortion clients. Mass media campaigns can deliver information about contraceptives to a wide audience, ideally raising public awareness and increasing use of contraceptives. In "Impact of Mass Media Campaigns on Intentions to Use the Female Condom in Tanzania," Sohail Agha of AIDSMark/Population Sciences International and Ronan Van Rossem of Utrecht University in the Netherlands find that while not as persuasive on an individual level as peer counseling or discussions with a health care provider, a radio and print marketing campaign reached significantly more people and indirectly increased intentions to use the female condom by fostering discussion of the product between partners.
In "Fertility Regulation Among Women in Abidjan, Cote D'Ivoire: Contraception, Abortion or Both?" Agnés Guillaume and Annabel Desgrées du Lou of the Paris based Institut de Recherche pour le Developpement investigate the methods women use to space births and control family size in an environment where access to contraceptives is limited and abortion is illegal. They find that 40% of women in Abidjan rely on contraceptives alone, 30% resort to abortion in the event of contraceptive failure, 3% depend on abortion alone and 27% use no method at all. The relationship between contraception and abortion is complex: While women may seek abortion because they do not have access to contraceptives or their contraceptive method fails, the authors find that a substantial proportion of women adopt a contraceptive for the first time after having an abortion.
Where abortion is legal, governments face the challenge of making it safe and accessible. Kim Dickson-Tetteh of Chris Hani Baragwanath Hospital in Johannesburg and Deborah L. Billings of Ipas in Mexico City describe and evaluate a program that could serve as a model for other countries in their article "Abortion Care Services Provided by Registered Midwives in South Africa". They find that midwives can provide high-quality services in the absence of doctors and that the great majority of women provided with contraceptive information during postabortion counseling adopt a method before leaving the clinic.
Also in this issue:
• "Source of Maternal and Child Health Care as an Indicator of Ability to Pay for Family Planning," by Karen G. Fleischman Foreit of The Futures Group International; and
• "When the Client Is Male: Client-Provider Interactions from a Gender Perspective," by Karin Ringheim of the Program for Appropriate Technology in Health.