Thirty years of ‘strange bedmates’: The ICPD and the nexus of population control, feminism, and family planning

Widely credited with ending population control and ushering in a new era of reproductive rights, the 1994 International Conference on Population and Development (ICPD) Programme of Action also included some important compromises. The commemoration of ICPD+30 presents an opportune moment to reflect critically on those compromises and their implications for family planning programmes in the three decades since. Here, we critically examine how these compromises have enabled population control logics to flourish within global family planning programmes and the ways that neo-Malthusian concerns still motivate contraceptive programming under co-opted feminist rhetoric. We argue that rather than binary stances of ‘pro’ or ‘anti’ contraception, the post-ICPD landscape includes multiple contested positions, including: (1) concern for reproductive rights and autonomy; (2) concern over fertility or population dynamics; and (3) opposition to biomedical contraception and abortion. Setting out the intersecting and diverging tenets of these ideologies, we call for more critical reflection on these tangled histories and engagement with reproductive justice during ICPD+30.