The fifth Millennium Development Goal has brought critical attention to the unacceptably high burden of maternal mortality and the need to improve antenatal health care. However, many of the approaches to reducing maternal mortality (e.g., increasing the number of deliveries at health facilities with skilled attendants or improving access to emergency obstetric care) are complex [...]

In the 1970s, policy-makers in both India and China, convinced that reducing population growth was critical for ending poverty, instituted coercive population policies. Yet fertility had already been declining in both countries before the population policies were instituted.