Family planning in a healthy, married population: Operationalizing the human rights approach in an Israeli health service setting

A community health center in Israel, delivering services to a geographically defined population, attempted to formulate goals for its postpartum family planning service. Taking into account the pronatalist climate in Israel along with the good health status of the population served by this center, it was decided that the community-wide goal of the family planning program was to ensure the rights of couples to decide freely and responsibly on the number and spacing of their children. Specific process and outcome objectives were developed based on helping couples define and clarify their family planning goals, and assisting them to achieve these goals. Preliminary evaluation of the intervention based on the objectives showed that 84.0 per cent of the cohort of women who gave birth in 1980 (n = 212) had specific postpartum planning goals as opposed to 69.0 per cent of women who gave birth in 1977 (n = 242). The percentage of women experiencing unplanned pregnancies during the two years after birth was reduced by 46 per cent in the 1980 cohort (6.1 per cent of the women) as compared with the 1977 cohort (11.2 per cent).