Embodied Choices, Cultural Realities: Socio-Cultural Contexts of LARC Uptake and Early Implant Removal in Rural Nepal

Abstract

Long-acting family planning methods have begun to be developed in modern times. Influenced by the government and other institutional promotional activities, women go for these contraceptive measures as an effective means for both controlling population growth and birth spacing. An ethnographic account from a village in Dhading district, Nepal, among the 30 implant user women from the 18 to 45 years of reproductive age group shows that there is a large tendency to discontinue usage in these long-acting family planning methods. This paper shows that the adoption or abandonment of biomedical technologies is largely based not on their mere efficacy but on their rootedness in social and cultural realms, which, in turn, reinterpret that efficacy. Therefore, in this paper, we argue that for the acceptance and adoption of any biomedical technology, it is imperative to consider the local cultural and social context.