Friday, October 05, 2012

The October Surprise

Lauran Neergaard writes for the Associated Press about the results of a "study of 9000 women in St. Louis, many of them poor or uninsured. They were given their choice of a range of contraceptive methods at no cost – from birth control pills to goof-proof options like the IUD or a matchstick-sized implant.

When price wasn't an issue, women flocked to the most effective contraceptives – the implanted options, which typically cost hundreds of dollars up-front to insert. These women experienced far fewer unintended pregnancies as a result, reported Dr. Jeffrey Peipert of Washington University in St. Louis in a study published Thursday.

The effect on teen pregnancy was striking: There were 6.3 births per 1,000 teenagers in the study. Compare that to a national rate of 34 births per 1,000 teens in 2010.

There also were substantially lower rates of abortion, when compared with women in the metro area and nationally: 4.4 to 7.5 abortions per 1,000 women in the study, compared with 13.4 to 17 abortions per 1,000 women overall in the St. Louis region, Peipert calculated. That's lower than the national rate, too, which is almost 20 abortions per 1,000 women."

"As a society, we want to reduce unintended pregnancies and abortion rates. This study has demonstrated that having access to no-cost contraception helps us get to that goal," said Alina Salganicoff, director of women's health policy at the Kaiser Family Foundation.

Read the whole thing here:  http://www.huffingtonpost.com/huff-wires/20121005/us-med-healthbeat-free-birth-control/

1 comment:

Terri Wagner said...

Is there maybe room to teach something nobler like abstinence?