In popular debates about reproductive and sexual rights, formal religions, especially Islam, are seen as barriers providing institutional and ideological resistance to women's realization of reproductive and social autonomy. This book challenges this simplified view of Islam. Based on original fieldwork in Eastern Indonesia, the book explores the complex factors that affect how young Indonesian women form their sexual subjectivities, discusses the cultural and historical conditions under which single Muslim women repress or express their sexuality, and examines how the cultural context, including other factors besides Islam, simultaneously influence the ways in which young single women approach courtship, and issues of sexuality and reproductive health. It demonstrates that Islam is neither alone in trying to control female sexuality, nor entirely successful in doing so.

This special issue explores morality agendas in the recent Indonesian context and in doing so, reveals the dynamism of morality debates as they occur in Indonesia and in broader Southeast Asian perspectives. In this Introduction we illustrate how morality (or the perceived lack of morality) acted in part as the impetus for reformasi (reformation), which forced an end in 1998 to the authoritarian New Order era. Subsequently, we discuss how reformasi influenced morality debates in Indonesia by both opening and foreclosing opportunities for tolerance around gender and sexuality. Specifically, we consider the impact of increasing democratisation and how various moral panics have been articulated in the widening space for social and moral critique. The articles in this special issue make a significant contribution to expanding three key themes – morality and boundaries, moral threats, and morality and subjectivity – and shows how these themes intersect with the conceptualisation and functioning of morality in contemporary Indonesia. We then tease out how the five articles in this special issue engage with these themes. Finally, we comment on our observations regarding the increasing visibility of morality debates in Indonesia in the past two decades, and the increasing social currency attributed to morality issues and debates in the public sphere.

Sexuality and sex education cannot be divorced from the moral values of the societies within which we must negotiate our sexual identities and relationships. Rather than pandering to the moral panic that is too often associated with the provision of sex education in non‐secular societies where religion is more visibly active in shaping sexual ideals and norms, this article takes up the challenge of investigating a relationship that is often represented as being innately contradictory. It explores the Islamic notion of zina (illicit sex) in relation to the provision of comprehensive sex education for Muslim youth in contemporary Indonesia. The article initially establishes the demand for sex education among Indonesian youth from the overlapping perspectives of health, human rights and Islam. It then explores the notion of zina in detail and exposes how Islamic stipulations against premarital sex are not necessarily in conflict with the provision of sex education. The final section of the article refines the argument in favour of utilizing Islam as a framework for developing religiously appropriate sex education and describes a suitable approach and content for Islamic sex education curricula for Indonesian youth.

Selected survey data on future aspirations and expectations from 3565 young Indonesians are presented in this study. Muslim-majority Indonesia is an Asian economic success story. The economy has seen solid growth, leading to an expansion of the private sector. The upward credentialling of the labour market and the rapid growth of the middle class have resulted. Accordingly, the transition to adulthood for working-class and lower middle-class youth has been extended by the necessity to complete schooling and tertiary training before work can be obtained and marriage can occur. Marriage and children still signify adulthood for both sexes. Career preference favoured the professions, especially for girls, despite tight competition for university places. While indicating upwardly mobile aspirations to middle-class life, respondents also demonstrated strong commitment to religious faith and normative family formation in the future. High expectations were tempered by realism though. When asked about obstacles to life dreams, most named material challenges such as family finances. Respondents from more privileged backgrounds were more likely to think non-material factors such as their own laziness would constitute an obstacle, while those lower on the socio-economic scale often indicated they did not have much chance of realising their life dreams due to material and structural constraints.

Induced abortion is widely practiced in Indonesia by both married and unmarried women. This paper draws on ethnographic research, conducted between 1996 and 1998, which focused on reproductive health and sexuality among young single women on the island of Lombok in Eastern Indonesia. While abortion for married women is tacitly accepted, especially for women with two or more children, premarital pregnancy and abortion remain a highly stigmatised and isolating experience for single women. Government family planning services are not legally permitted to provide contraception to single women and their access to reproductive health care is very limited. Abortion providers were highly critical of unmarried women who sought abortions, despite their willingness to carry out the procedure. The quality of abortion services offered to single women was compromised by the stigma attached to premarital sex and pregnancy. Women who experienced unplanned premarital pregnancy faced personal and familial shame, compromised marriage prospects, abandonment by their partners, single motherhood, a stigmatised child, early cessation of education, and an interrupted income or career, all of which were not desirable options. Young women were only able to legitimately continue premarital pregnancy through marriage. In the absence of an offer of marriage, single women necessarily resorted to abortion to avoid compromising their futures.

This study investigated the reproductive knowledge and patient education needs of 212 female Indonesian infertility patients. A cross-sectional survey was conducted from July to September 2011 by married women, 18 to 45 years old, seeking infertility care from clinics in Jakarta, Surabaya and Denpasar. Participants were literate, the sample was highly educated, predominantly urban and primarily middle class or elite. Infertility consultants were cited as the most useful source of information by 65% of respondents, 94% understood that infertility results from male and female factors, 84% could distinguish between infertility and sterility, and 70% could identify their fertility window. However, demand for further knowledge of reproduction and infertility was expressed by 87%. Patients' knowledge of the causes and treatment of infertility was extremely poor. Two key causes of infertility, advanced age and untreated sexually transmissible infections, were not named. Only 19% of patients had received written information. The study revealed the need for expanded infertility patient education among women patients accessing fertility care in Indonesian clinics. Opportunities for education should be maximized within infertility consultations. A standardized infertility patient education curriculum should be developed, incorporating patients' priorities, as well as gaps in existing knowledge.