ABSTRACT
The 1974 Bucharest World Population Conference marked the opening of critical debate within the international public discourse regarding global population policy. This chapter explores the entrance of two new actors, the global women's health and rights movement (GWHRM) and the right-to-life movement, into the international public discourse on population policy. It demonstrates that the United States did not, according to a realist perspective, seek to impose its norms on the developing world through sheer hard power or material incentives alone. Finally, it discusses how feminists, working within the United States and abroad, began to question the ethics of population control programs during this time. Although feminist voices were somewhat sparse at the Bucharest conference, they found another international forum when the United Nations declared 1975-1985 the UN Decade for Women. The chapter demonstrates that the process of normative change is dependent upon an opening of critical debate whereby the dominant norm is challenged.
