Informed policy making for the prevention of unwanted pregnancy - Understanding low-income women's experiences with family planning

California health and welfare officials asked the authors to identify ways that their programs could encourage service use among low-income women. The project posed a challenge: The clients wanted to identify supply-side barr iers amenable to intervention, but prior research suggested other factors m ight be more influential. The approach was to examine service-related issue s, but in the broader context of women's experiences. The authors identify factors amenable to intervention, including inaccurate beliefs about method s. Other important influences-such as instability of relationships, skeptic ism about planning, or unsatisfactory method experiences-may be beyond the reach of specific policies, but are nevertheless critical to understanding program context. Findings suggest that punitive messages and policies based on a simplistic model of behavior may be unrealistic and ineffective.