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Free birth control causes U.S. abortion rates to plummet
Free birth control could prevent 1,060,370 unplanned pregnancies and 873,250 abortions a year in the U.S., according to a study.
Thu, Oct 04 2012 at 6:33 PM
A lack of access to reliable birth control is a major factor behind the 3 million unplanned pregnancies in the United States every year. (Photo: Kevork Djansezian/AFP)
Providing free birth control to women and teens in Missouri at high risk of unplanned pregnancies led to a drastic drop in abortion rates and teenage mothers, a study published Thursday found.
If the same results were replicated across the United States, free birth control could prevent 1,060,370 unplanned pregnancies and 873,250 abortions a year.
"The impact of providing no-cost birth control was far greater than we expected in terms of unintended pregnancies," said lead author Jeff Peipert of the Washington University School of Medicine.
A lack of access to reliable birth control is a major factor behind the 3 million unplanned pregnancies in the United States every year.
Previous studies have found that 49 percent of U.S. pregnancies are unintended. Half result from a failure to use birth control while the other half are due to inconsistent or incorrect use of birth control and contraceptive failure.
President Barack Obama's landmark health reform expanded access by requiring insurance companies to eliminate 'co-pays' on birth control and other health services beginning in August.
But millions of women without insurance still have to pay for their birth control out of pocket.
The Contraceptive CHOICE Project, which was funded by the Susan Thompson Buffett Foundation, provided counseling and free birth control to 9,256 teenage girls and women in the St. Louis area from 2007 until 2011.
Abortion rates among those women were less than half the regional and national averages: just six per 1,000 participants compared with 20 per 1,000 women nationwide.
The rate of teenage birth among study participants was just 6.3 per 1,000 compared to 34.1 per 1,000 teenagers nationwide.
One reason for the significant improvement is because 75 percent of the women chose to use long-acting methods such as implants and intrauterine devices, Peipert said.
These methods are more than 20 times more effective than birth control pills, patches or rings but have a significantly higher up-front cost.
Some doctors are also "overly restrictive," Peipert said, and will not provide IUDs or implants to young women or women who plan to have children at a later date.
The study found women who chose the long acting methods were happier and much more likely to stick with them.
Some 85 percent of the women who chose long acting methods were still using them a year later, while only 55 percent of the study participants who chose birth control pills did so.
"Contraception only works when you keep using it," Peipert told AFP. "There are gaps in people's contraceptive use and that's when they get pregnant."
Expanding the program to provide free birth control nationwide would be costly, but Peipert said it would cost far less than dealing with the consequences.
"We're already paying for unintended pregnancies," he said, noting that U.S. taxpayers pay about $11 billion in costs associated with one million unplanned births every year.
The study was published in the journal Obstetrics and Gynecology.
It comes a couple weeks after the American College of Obstetricians and Gynecologists issued new guidelines recommending that doctors offer implants and IUDs to sexually active teenagers.
"These long-acting methods eliminate the problem of inconsistent use common with other contraceptives that can lead to unintended pregnancy," the college said, noting that complications from IUDs and implants are rare.
Copyright 2012 AFP Global Edition
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Funny story, my health care does not allow for anything "obama health" related. They actually say that they do not "do" obama care and make you still pay for everything like normal. I was denied my one free health checkup and I was still paying co-pays on birth control while I was taking it. Apparently healthcare providers think that Obama care is an option and you cannot argue with them, they just deny you service.
In other news, water is wet.
Here's a novel idea, maybe teach the kids the word NO and what that means. When they learn that, that is always 100% way of not getting pregnant.
Why, what a new approach! Because we all know that nowhere ever in the history of the world has anyone, especially a teenager, done something after being told not to do it.
Meanwhile, here in the reality-based universe, we've become pretty aware that just telling people to not have sex isn't the most effective method of birth control.
Instead of teaching kids to say no. We need to teach kids that sex is acceptable and it's okay as long as you're being safe. We need to teach kids that sex is not sin because it isn't and that they can feel comfortable asking questions about it. Sex is a completely normal human activity yet the american society makes it taboo.
Oh look a guy telling women not to have sex! Fact check: sometimes saying no doesn't work, it's called rape. :)
We've tried that for the past 50 years.
They're going to do what they want regardless of whatever kind of restrictive teaching is forced upon them. So, why not provide the education and tools to prepare them for whatever decisions they make?
The right wing USED to be all for birth control and legal abortions, for that very reason of not having to pay for welfare of these children down the line. Because of the right wing's shift into fundamentalist Christian territory we see a lot of these guys taking these stances. It's not so much that they're religious men, it's more about votes and mobilizing a certain percent of the population. Scary to think about..
i'm not sure it's to do with going all christian. more that without the image of the woman as a homemaker and child bearer subservient to the man, the idea of the family was starting to erode. the family is a fantastically cheap way of reproducing the workforce which is why the right will do anything to prevent things which attack the family unit such as women having control over their bodies
Holy crap its almost like birth control actually PREVENTS unwanted pregnancies. Golly gee who saw that one coming?
I think the problem is that the right wing is more about punishing people for having sex outside of marriage by making them take care of unwanted children than reducing out of wedlock births and abortions.