The record of family planning programs.

In the past 15 years or so, increasing numbers of developing countries, assisted by the international community at interest, have adopted policies to reduce rapid population growth. That effort has included a wide range of activities, but the major direct action has consisted of family planning programs intended to lower fertility rates. In recent years, such programs have come under more and more questioning, if not criticism; and that trend may have culminated in the World Population Conference at Bucharest, August 1974, which refrained from a strong endorsement of such programs although family planning was included within the “Recommendations for Action” of the World Population Plan of Action.