Antenatal contraception — simple, feasible, but is it safe and ethical in resource-poor environments?

In developing countries, antenatal care is used by more women than any other reproductive health services available and many women who receive antenatal care will not receive intrapartum care by a trained provider and even fewer will receive postnatal care. At present, antenatal care provides contraceptive counselling but not contraceptive provision. An important reason for this is the perceived absence of a suitable method that could be distributed or started during antenatal care. In this article, we discuss the available options. We conclude that antenatal insertion of subdermal contraceptive implants is very likely to be safe and ethically defensible where access to contraceptive services is poor.