Paper short abstract:

While modern contraception is strongly promoted for young women in North Kivu DRC, uptake remains limited. The gap between young women's perceptions of family planning and the public health and development discourse is explored.

Paper long abstract:

Young women in North Kivu increasingly have access to family planning methods through government health facilities. However, previous empirical research has shown that family planning is widely portrayed as a means for married couples to reduce household poverty, is often not acceptable for religious leaders, or may be perceived as an external intervention aiming at reducing African populations. Offering family planning to young people in turn bears a connotation of inciting premarital sex, which is socially discredited, and concerns with the safety of contraceptive commodities prevail. Young people themselves are often sexually active before their marriage, and are confronted with many different viewpoints and sources of information, including information about many ineffective ways to prevent or end a pregnancy. As a consequence, abortion rates and adolescent pregnancy are rampant, as is maternal mortality. In the local context where young unmarried women are not expected to be sexually active, using hormonal contraception outside marriage is quickly understood as synonymous with a damaged reputation, compromising prospects for future marriage and affecting family relations. Pregnancy, however, may lead to an undesired marriage that young women try to avoid. This paper explores why young women take the risk not to use contraception, potentially exposing themselves to risky abortions in a context where the government and non-governmental organizations strongly promote modern contraceptives for young people and outlines how young people relate to the discourse of family planning as a means for poverty reduction and for women's empowerment.