Resources for service provision: policies and politics

Abstract

Twenty-five years ago, this journal reported on Dr Elphis Christopher’s astonishingly prophetic perspective on family planning (FP) in her Jennifer Hallam Memorial Lecture, delivered at the 19th Current Fertility and Reproductive Health Symposium of the National Association of Family Planning Doctors (NAFPD) and the Family Planning Association.1 Recalling the court case of 1876 against Annie Besant and Charles Bradlaugh for republishing a pamphlet with its advocacy for contraception, she regretted that despite the favourable environment from subsequent socioeconomic, legal and attitudinal changes, there was still poor utilisation of contraceptive services due to apathy, fatalism and religious convictions.