Family planning succeeds through empowerment rather than contraceptive access alone.

Evidence

The psychosocial approach fosters personal and social change through enlightenment and enablement rather than by coercion (Bandura, 1997). Planned childbearing is addressed in terms of families’ desired futures. Efforts to reduce the rate of population growth through family planning must address the broader issue of the role and status of women. Improving diverse aspects of people’s lives, not merely targeting contraception, achieves the desired changes. Often the problem is not access to contraception but rather psychosocial impediments to its use. The challenges are greatest in societies in which women are marginalized, disallowed aspirations, denied access to education, forced into arranged marriages and early childbearing, granted little say in their reproductive lives, and denied liberty and dignity. Women’s social and economic development requires eliminating cultural barriers to their education. — Albert Bandura, Moral Disengagement, 2852

Categorization

• SEED: Possible angle: effective social change programs work through enablement not coercion — compare with Bandura’s disengagement mechanisms where harmful policy relies on coercion.
• corroborated: 2 independent passages support this claim — Albert Bandura, Moral Disengagement: How People Do Harm…, 2852