This report aims to evaluate the processes and implementation mechanisms of judicial waivers across different jurisdictions.

It is important to understand the social, physical, and administrative environment in which the grassroots components of a health program function and provide services.

In the absence of a basic questioning of women's status and role in society, birth control, abortions-and even maternal health care end up merely replacing an old set of traditions with new ones.

One of the purposes of family planning programmes in developing countries is to provide for the unmet needs of couples for contraception.

Contraception as a behavioral phenomenon has been the focus of many population researches, during the last half a century. In fact, explaining contraceptive behavior is a complex theoretical effort. Learning, motivation,

Health is a major issue in the women's movement, along with the struggle for justice, dignity and equality.

In l995, nurses and doctors in many of the public maternity ward in the state of Tamil Nadu in India were routinely inserting IUDs immediately following childbirth and abortions, as part of the target-orientated family, planning policy.

Kipling was paying tribute to the Vicereine who established the Fund associated with her name. This was an organisation which employed medical women (or 'lady doctors') to run a chain of hospitals and dispensaries all over India and Burma.

A woman would prefer to prevent an unwanted pregnancy rather than having an abortion or carrying the pregnancy to term. No amount of legal or religious restrictions, social stigma or lack of access to professional care can stop her if she decides to seek termination of an unplanned pregnancy.

The paper uses the National Family Health Survey (NFHS, 1992-93) data to examine the extent to which sex preferences have constrained the success of the family planning programme and inhibited the acceptance of contraception in the different states of the country.