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This work points to the lack of inclusion of marginalized women user s perspectives in the government subsidized family planning system in West Bengal, India. It attempts to address this gap through qualitative research conducted in Post-Partum clinics in the state sponsored healthcare system. Contending that the historical and socio-cultural contexts of fertility related decision making - factors such as education, awareness, social access, and the ability to negotiate competing pressures - have a significant role to play in this domain of women´s lives, it compares the claims of policy with the reality of women´s experiences. Within a discussion of the why, what, when and how of women´s interactions with the system that they must use, this work presents an argument for the need to include user perspectives in the creation of reproduction related policy, technology and services.

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Devalina Mookerjee completed her Ph.D in Communication with a specialization in Health from Purdue University. She has worked in a number of areas around communication, being at various, and sometimes overlapping times, teacher, writer, editor, communication specialist and research consultant, and now lives in New Delhi, India.

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