herenciageneticayenfermedad: MercatorNet ► India and the contraceptive shot. Natural Love Stories

In August last year the Indian government took a step that women’s rights activists had managed to stall for three decades: it approved the use of the contraceptive injection Depo-Provera in the public health system. There was no fanfare and it was not until a couple of weeks ago that the New York Times published an article about it. But it is a significant victory for the international population control movement.

“The shot”, which lasts for three months and is touted as reversible, certainly sounds better than mass sterilisation “camps” for women in the prime of life, but it has health risks such as loss of bone density, unpleasant side effects such as disruption of the menstrual cycle, weight gain and depression, and in some cases results in infertility. Despite talk of “choice” for women, it looks like just another chapter of India’s long war on fertility – at the expense of women’s health and dignity. See my article below.

Ironically, this happens as women in the West are waking up to the nasty things that hormonal contraception does to their bodies and looking for alternatives. In a Family Edge post Tamara El-Rahi highlights, Natural Love Stories, a new film from Natural Womanhood, a great website dedicated to fertility awareness based methods. I know that there are people promoting natural family planning in India; if only they had the funds to do more.