Although part of a universal human rights discourse, concepts of reproductive rights were heavily gendered and conveyed distinct gender roles and family models. This chapter traces how notions of human rights intersected with international debates on population control and reproductive rights in the second half of the twentieth century. It sheds light on different phases of discourse surrounding reproductive decision-making and associated views on what constituted an ideal family, including who should enjoy the ‘right to decide’. Concluding with some observation on current discourses on reproductive human rights, it suggests a periodisation from a rather Western-centred family model of reproduction in the 1950s and 1960s to a broadening of the discourse in the 1960s and 1970s that included demands for women’s decision-making rights. After the 1990s brought a global notion of ’reproductive human rights’ and the late twentieth century saw more people gaining access to reproductive care, we currently observe considerable hardening both in terms of rights and access the effects of which still remain to explore. Sources for this study come primarily from American Archives and also include expert discourses und public debates in the media. When the American birth control pioneer Margaret SangerSanger, Margaret accepted the nomination as president of a new organisation in the field of population policies in 1952—together with the Indian aristocrat and activist Lady Rama RauRau, Rama, this marked a turning point in the international development of population organisations and in the diffusion of birth control knowledge. For SangerSanger, Margaret, the founding of the International Planned Parenthood FoundationInternational Planned Parenthood Foundation (IPPF) (IPPF) in the course of the Third International Conference on Planned Parenthood in Mumbai in November 1952Third International Conference on Planned Parenthood in Mumbai (1952) signified the acceptance of the global relevance of birth control for the benefit of women and children. SangerSanger, Margaret concluded: ‘This is the culmination of my life’s work.’ In a radio interview with American journalist Edward MurrowMurrow, Edward the following year, she explained: ‘My interests have expanded from local conditions and needs to a world horizon, where peace on earth may be achieved when children are wanted before they are conceived.’ For SangerSanger, Margaret, the reduction of global population growth and the expansion of women’s agency through the diffusion of knowledge were two sides of the same coin. Other than many of her male colleagues, she insisted that women should be able to make conscious and informed reproductive decisions—through access to contraceptive knowledge, cheap contraceptives, even sterilisationsReproduction and reproductive rightssterilisation. However, it cannot be denied that she integrated eugenic arguments in her quest for the ‘rational regulation of populations’.