Exploresearch (ISSN: 3048-815X) ( Vol. 03 | No. 3 | July - September, 2026 )

Consent Under Constraint: Women’s Accounts of Postpartum Contraceptive Governance in an Urban Village in Delhi

Author: Aparna Misra

India’s fertility transition has brought national and state fertility below replacement level. However, official family-planning policy emphasizes contraceptive use as voluntary, informed and target free. Nevertheless, marginalized women’s lived experiences frequently highlight pressure, a lack of complete information, and the dismissal of their refusals during postpartum contraceptive interactions. In this article, I explore this policy-practice tension, through a bounded qualitative case study examining the accounts of roughly 25 women from one low-income settlement in North-West Delhi. They reported having experienced coercive postpartum contraceptive encounters in public health facilities. Semi-structured interviews and small-group discussions conducted between September and November 2025 were interpreted alongside focused documentary analysis of demography reports and official family-planning guidance materials. Applying reproductive governance and epistemic injustice as sensitizing concepts, I found three mechanisms through which formal consent was undermined: refusal was eroded during a time of physical and institutional dependency, women experienced undisclosed or poorly explained postpartum IUD insertion and difficulty accessing removal, and providers engaged moralizing language that portrayed poor and migrant women’ s fertility as irresponsible. The findings do not aim to measure prevalence of coercion or represent Delhi’ s public hospitals. Instead, this purposively sampled set of accounts illuminates an implementation gap between rights-based policy and the everyday organization of care. These insights build on earlier recommendations for non-directive counselling; documentation of refusal alongside consent; accessible removal and follow-up pathways; and qualitative monitoring of women’ s experiences alongside contraceptive-uptake indicators.

Misra, A. (2026). Consent Under Constraint: Women’s Accounts of Postpartum Contraceptive Governance in an Urban Village in Delhi. Exploresearch, 03(03), 110–121. https://doi.org/10.62823/exre/03.03.268

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DOI:

Article DOI: 10.62823/exre/03.03.268

DOI URL: https://doi.org/10.62823/exre/03.03.268

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