ABSTRACT
Women in ancient times are known to have tried a variety of methods to control their fertility, ranging from potions to intravaginal and intrauterine plugs. China’s family planning policy has been marked by controversy over its ‘one-child’ programme, a policy adopted as the result of a perception that the inertia of demographics was rapidly dooming China to long-term poverty and illiteracy. The readiness with which the Chinese government adopted the one-child policy also indicates a ready acceptance of the notion that, in the end, woman’s bodies as reproductive propensities are legitimate tools of state interests. In the 1980s, eugenic politics and generic distrust of reproductive technologies fostered by the history of birth control and reproductive health services were taking their toll in another arena: a new reproductive technology designed to provide a medical form of abortion. Both contraceptive technology and reproductive technologies for infertility relief separate sexual intercourse from procreation.
