This paper presents the results of a study on women from a low-income community in Recife, Pernambuco State, Brazil, focusing on how the women practice their family planning. The study is based on an analysis of reproductive practices by these women, specifically related to conception and contraception. The paper argues that the family planning care provided to these women involves a so-called "low-profile interventionist" policy, meaning that decisions concerning the number and spacing of children is shifted from the family domain to that of attending physicians, with a gradual transfer of control from the public sector to the health field.
Reproduction; Family Planning; Gender