From family planning to sexual and reproductive health: policy implications.

Background Providers of family planning services deserve much credit for the development of the current concept of sexual and reproductive health. With their early recognition that family planning is the centrepiece of matters pertaining to reproduction and sexuality, the term ‘sexual medicine’ was appended whenever family planning was mentioned in the objectives of the National Association of Family Planning Doctors. The theme of their seventh annual general meeting was medical gynaecology, and articles in the British Journal of Family Planning in 1980 addressed topics such as rape, in vitro fertilisation, menstrual regulation and medico-legal problems, as well as broader issues such as demography and population policies. Whereas meagre resources were then available to address those issues, subsequent events led to the emergence of the co-ordinated discipline of sexual and reproductive health, which now has international support for service provision.