Contesting contraceptive innovation—Reinventing the script

The article describes how the merging of Southern and Northern women's health groups resulted in a powerful transnational movement, with a collective oppositional identity based on shared solidarity in campaigns for reproductive rights and against state coercion in reproductive matters. It focuses on the ways in which the movement framed issues of rights and safety and pointed to the possible abuse potential of two new longer-acting contraceptive technologies, Norplant and the anti-fertility vaccines. The contestations by women's health advocates resulted in the emergence of a strong commitment among scientists to involve women's health advocates in the development and introduction of new contraceptive technologies. By engaging in the construction of safety and efficacy claims, and by outlining conditions for the introduction of the new technologies (so-called introduction scripts) women's health advocates were able to reinscribe the technologies with representations of bodily integrity and reproductive rights, rather than population control. I argue that a split within the women's health movement on the need to ban the new technologies did not weaken its impact, but, in fact, enhanced this success. I describe, in detailed case studies on the Norplant and Anti-fertility vaccine controversies, how both strands of women's health advocacy claim to be able to represent the interest of users, but that their representations of users differ. The ‘no-to-Norplan’t and ‘no-to-anti-fertility’ vaccines strands see users as victims of a state-led medical establishment enabled power, which is inscribed in the technology. The more moderate strand of activism argue that women's interests and needs differ from one setting to another, and that they are best met by making available to women a range of contraceptive options which allow for a free and informed choice.