Contraceptive Safety and Effectiveness: Re-Evaluating Women's Needs and Professional Criteria

Abstract

Never before in History have so many People used contraceptive technology to regulate and control their fertility. Contraceptive prevalence in developing countries has increased from 9 per-cent of couples in 1965-70 to over 50 percent in 1985-90.  There were an estimated 500 million married contraceptive users in the world in 1989.This is reason enough for contraceptive safety and effectiveness to be important reproductive health concerns.

On what basis, then, should the safety and efficacy of contraceptive methods be defined and assessed? The priorities and perceptions of scientists and researchers, family planning service providers, women's health activists, and users of contraception in response to this question can be astonishingly different, as this issue of the journal shows.