Indonesia's family planning program is challenged by religious conservatives
(The Christian Science Monitor) The village of Wonosari, nestled in the hills above the Javanese city of Yogyakarta, is experiencing a baby boom.
Infants wail and coo in several of the tile-roofed, one-story houses lining the main dirt road. In one of the homes, 19-year-old newlywed Wadianti listens as a midwife from a Yogyakarta health clinic explains to her and her 21-year-old husband, Anggit Bayu, how to prepare for the birth of their first child, only weeks away.
The young couple hadn’t planned to become parents so soon after marrying—Anggit had hoped to wait until he was 26 and had finished his studies at Islamic University in Yogyakarta, and Wadianti had wanted to complete her studies as well. But the couple, devout Muslims, were suspicious of most contraceptive methods, convinced they could cause disease and make getting pregnant more difficult later on.
