Achieving the goal of the London Summit on family planning by adhering to voluntary, rights-based family planning: What can we learn from past experiences with coercion?

The 2012 London Summit on Family Planning refocused attention on family planning, garnering much-needed support for the goal of reenergizing and expanding programs in 69 low- and medium-income countries to enable 120 million more women…to use contraceptives by 2020. Although the response to the summit\u27s initiative (referred to as FP2020 ) was generally positive, reproductive health and rights advocates expressed concern that the focus on a numeric goal was a retreat from the 1994 consensus of the International Conference on Population and Development (ICPD), which promoted rights and repudiated targets. Following the London Summit, some advocates questioned how the ambitious goal of the initiative might be achieved, and at least one commenter raised the specter of coercion—without the proper safeguards, would the rights of women, ostensibly the center of the initiative, be protected