Forty years ago, the French parliament passed the Neuwirth Act liberalizing contraception in France. Why did the government hold back for so long? Why the change of attitude? Looking at the means traditionally used by couples to control their fertility, Fabrice Cahen analyses the reasons for this French legislative inertia compared with the United Kingdom and the United States. Many thought that the new law would bring an end to unplanned pregnancies. But as Arnaud Régnier-Loilier and Henri Leridon explain in their overview of forty years of birth control, one pregnancy in three is still unintended. Why is this the case? How do the couples of today imagine their future family? And how do they seek to achieve their aspirations?

Un numéro spécial de huit pages consacré aux quarante ans de la loi Neuwirth libérelisant la contraception en France

• Eight births in ten are planned...
• ...but one pregnancy in three is unintended
• Carefully timed births
  

• Did France lag behind?
• The origins of a reform
• The limit of the reform