In 1975 the Indian president Indira Gandhi proclaimed the emergency period which would go on until 1977. Under this time approximately 8 million men and women were sterilized in the name of family planning. Many of them did not volunteer. This was not just an Indian con- cern because the family planning program was largely funded by international aid. The Swe- dish involvement in the program was debated 1977–1980, in what has been called “SIDA’s Watergate”. This thesis aims to map out the part of this debate that took place in daily news- papers and magazines. The purpose is to examine the arguments and the ideas that they build on, especially ideas concerning family planning, population politics and international aid.

The result of the thesis shows that this debate can be seen as a part of the decline of the so called international population movement, that was compiled as a network of specialists and politicians and which in the middle of the 20th century propagated the importance of family planning to stop world population growth. In the Swedish press the lack of support for this kind of policy was uncovered and new ways of looking at family planning were expressed. Family planning was argued to be a part of a broader health centred approach, in which wom- en and child health were important components. In a way the views expressed in the debate antedated the SRHR approach of the 1990s.