Abstract
Reproductive histories are often saturated with pure biomedical and biotechnological investigations, largely ignoring the intricate web of external factors surrounding the discourse within a more significant and country-specific context. Therefore, this study closes this historiographical lacuna by providing comprehensive research on the history of modern birth control in sub-Saharan Africa (SSA), focusing on Nigeria. Drawing upon copious resources and utilizing primary and secondary materials, this research explores Lagos women’s fertility and contraceptive journeys, revealing a multifaceted landscape shaped by cultural norms, societal expectations, medical criteria, political enforcements, religious pronouncement, and personal choices. This is a unique study that centres on the lived experiences of menopausal women living in Lagos. It departs from the norm of writing contraceptive histories without a focus on the beneficiary of the innovation or the generalization of contraceptive use by women across the African continent. To provide a holistic study, this academic engagement adopts a longue duree method of historical writing. Hence, this research provides a background of women’s reproductive practices before the 1960s, up to the late twentieth century. This study reveals that high fertility in Nigeria in pre-modern times prevailed because it was rational; it was an intelligible orientation of means towards ends, given particular conditions – high mortality and farming as the basis of productive enterprise. In this circumstance, birth control was neither envisioned nor necessary. In the colonial epoch, the effort made by the imperial government to curtail fecundity through reproductive technology was counterproductive as the application of biomedicine and the education of colonial mothers created an atmosphere for child survival and the sustenance of large family size. Women in the locale were not passive recipients of imperial reproductive interventions as they constantly reimagined and restructured the initiatives to suit their purposes. Paradoxically, contraception was used as a tool of fertility regulation, ultimately ensuring the survival of many children in the family. Hence, what evolved was overpopulation, and after World War II, growing concerns over social threats resulting from demographic trends in the third world led to pressure for depopulation, especially in countries like Nigeria, the most populous country in Africa, and particularly, Lagos, the largest city in Nigeria. The campaigns towards population control raised complex issues around reproductive politics, the bioethics of selective reproductive technologies (Depo-Provera), and the cynicism of imperial biomedical imperatives. This thinking was justified by the experience of adverse side effects reported by users of hormonal contraceptives. Thus, modern contraceptive use in Lagos went through the stages of acceptance, resistance, and adaptation. These analyses are represented chronologically in a tripartite framework of contraceptive experimentation, retreat and resurgence.