ABSTRACT
Social policies concerning birth control share in all societies an inextricable linkage with the larger political economy. This is particularly true in Third World countries, where birth-control policies are often used in various ways by the state and development agencies to promote a particular strategy of development. A massive birth-control campaign carried out in Puerto Rico during the 1970s used surgical methods of sterilization in attempt to control population growth, ostensibly as a means of reducing poverty and "modernizing" the island economy. Socialist Cuba, by way of contrast, pursued a policy of radically liberalized birth control methods beginning in the 1960s, in order for women to optimize their participation in the labor force. In Nicaragua, birth-control policies have become a contested terrain in the shifting national politics that began with the 1979 overthrow of the Somoza dictatorship. In all three Latin American cases, it becomes clear upon investigation that the social content as well as the relative success in implementing birth-control policies display a clear linkage to the larger political economy that surrounds national development.
