An engaging, insightful history of the family planning movement and its connection to broader social and political developments across the globe.
 
Historical accounts of the twentieth century global family planning movement have largely focused on the most prominent activists and those at the helm of international foundations and government programs. In The Gospel of Family Planning, however, historian Nicole C. Bourbonnais shifts our attention to frontline workers—doctors, social workers, nurses, fieldworkers, consultants, church groups, and volunteers—who, she compellingly shows, played a central (if complicated) role.
 
Through a mix of collective biography and micro-history, Bourbonnais visits clinics, doorsteps, and bedrooms, revealing the everyday, ground-level workings of the movement. Telling a global history that spans decades, she traces the shift from grassroots family planning activism to state population control programs to movements for reproductive rights and justice, highlighting the fine line between coercion and liberation that shaped efforts to intervene in people’s reproductive lives. Throughout the book, Bourbonnais invites readers to consider how the intertwined histories of missionary work, humanitarianism, feminism, development, colonialism, decolonization, racism, and the Cold War shaped personal relationships and intimate interactions.