Get "In the Know": Questions About Pregnancy, Contraception and Abortion

PREVENTION AND CONTRACEPTION

Contraceptive Use in the United States

How much of her lifetime does the average women spend trying to avoid an unintended pregnancy?

• The typical U.S. woman wants—and has—two children. She therefore spends roughly three decades trying to avoid becoming pregnant. (2) In general, women worldwide are sexually active but do not want to have a child throughout most of their childbearing years. (9)

Do most women in the United States use contraceptives?

• Almost nine in 10 women who are at risk of unintended pregnancy (women who are sexually active, able to become pregnant, and neither pregnant nor trying to become pregnant) are using a contraceptive method. (10)

How well do contraceptives work?

• Women using contraceptives experience the following failure rates:

What about women who were using contraception and still became pregnant?

• Sometimes even women who use their contraceptive method perfectly become pregnant. Condoms may break or slip, and even highly effective hormonal methods are not 100% effective when used perfectly. Often, women and their partners use methods imperfectly or inconsistently; for example, they do not use condoms every single time they have sex, and thus become pregnant. (13)

What are the most common contraceptives used in the United States?

• The pill, female sterilization and the male condom, in that order, are the most widely used methods. (10)

Public Funding for Contraception

How many U.S. women need publicly funded contraceptives, and why?

• Some 12 million women aged 20–44 need publicly supported contraceptive services because they are at risk of unwanted pregnancy and have incomes below 250% of the federal poverty level. An additional 4.9 million sexually active teenagers also need publicly supported services. (14)

How do poor women afford contraceptives?

• More than one-third of U.S. women are eligible for publicly supported contraceptive services and supplies because their income is below 250% of the federal poverty level. Publicly funded family planning services help women to prevent an estimated 1.3 million unplanned pregnancies and 630,000 abortions each year. (15)

What proportion of women obtain publicly funded reproductive health and family planning services?

• One in six U.S. women who received recent contraceptive or reproductive health care obtained these services at a publicly funded clinic. (16)

Parental Involvement in Teen Contraceptive Use

Do adolescents under the age of 18 have to obtain parents’ permission to get prescription contraceptives?

• No. There are no state or federal laws requiring that adolescents obtain their parents’ permission for contraceptive services, and some states explicitly allow minors to consent.(17) Moreover, some types of federal funding for family planning services, such as Title X and Medicaid, require that sexual and reproductive health services be provided confidentially, regardless of age. However, most family planning clinics encourage minor adolescents to voluntarily involve parents in their sexual and reproductive health decisions. (18)

Are most parents of teenagers at family planning clinics aware that their teenage daughters are accessing sexual health services?

• Sixty percent of teenagers who have used a clinic for sexual and reproductive health services say their parents know they are there—either because they told their parents themselves or a parent recommended the clinic. (19)

What is the potential impact of laws requiring parental involvement in teens’ contraceptive use?

• Among those teenagers whose parents are unaware of their contraceptive use, 70% would not use a clinic for prescription contraceptives if the law required that their parents be notified. Twenty-five percent of those whose parents are unaware would continue to have sex but would either rely on withdrawal or not use any birth control at all. Only 1% say that their only reaction would be to stop having sex. (19)

Contraceptive Use Among Women Seeking Abortion

How many women who had an abortion in 2000 were using contraceptives?

• Fifty-four percent of U.S. women who had an abortion in 2000 were using a method in the month they became pregnant. (13)

Does this mean that contraceptives are ineffective 54% of the time?

• No. Neither contraceptives nor the people using them are perfect, but failure rates for modern methods are very low when the methods are used perfectly. (Fewer than one in 100 women become pregnant in their first year of using the IUD, female sterilization, the injectable, vasectomy or the pill.) However, because women who are using contraceptives are motivated to prevent an unplanned birth, they are more likely than women who were not using contraceptives to seek an abortion should they accidentally become pregnant. (20)

What proportion of U.S. women who had an abortion in 2000 had never used contraceptives?

• Eight percent had never used a contraceptive method—down from 11% in 1996. (13)

Why do women using contraceptives get pregnant?

• Women who use contraceptives and become pregnant offer a number of explanations, including having used the method inconsistently and having had a condom slip out of place. Some 76% of women who had an abortion after becoming pregnant while using the pill, and 49% who did so after conceiving while using the condom, report that they used the method inconsistently; 42% of women who had an abortion after becoming pregnant while using the condom report that the condom slipped out of place. (13)

Why did some women not use contraceptives in the month they became pregnant?

• Women give many reasons for not using contraceptives in the month they became pregnant. About one-third say they did not think they could get pregnant, and another third state that they had concerns about contraceptive side effects or had had problems with methods in the past. More than one in 10 report having had a problem accessing contraceptives. One-quarter said they did not expect to have sex, and just over 1% say that they had unwanted sex. Among minors, nearly one in six say they were afraid that if they used contraceptives, their parents would find out that they were having sex. (13)

Emergency Contraception (EC)

What is emergency contraception? Emergency contraception, sometimes called the “morning-after pill,” consists of one or more of the same hormones found in ordinary birth control pills. When taken in a concentrated dosage within 72 hours after unprotected intercourse, these hormones can prevent pregnancy. (21,22)

Is the “morning-after pill” the same as the “abortion pill”?

• No. The “morning-after pill,” more accurately called emergency contraception, is not the “abortion pill,” also called mifepristone, Mifeprex or RU-486. When taken within 72 hours after unprotected intercourse, emergency contraception can prevent pregnancy, but it has no effect on an established pregnancy. (21,22)

How effective is emergency contraception?

• Research suggests that the progestin-only method, Plan B, prevents pregnancy after unprotected sex between 59% and 94% of the time. Timing is key: Emergency contraception is more effective the sooner it is taken after unprotected sex. (23)

Contraception Worldwide

What are the benefits of providing contraceptive services worldwide?

• Satisfying the unmet need for contraceptive services in developing countries would avert about 52 million unintended pregnancies annually, which, in turn, would save more than 1.5 million women’s lives. (24)

How much would it cost to provide contraceptive services to the women who need them?

• The cost of providing contraceptive services to the 201 million women in developing countries with unmet need (those using traditional methods or no method) would be approximately $3.9 billion per year. (24)

back to top 20 questions

This resource was produced with support from the David and Lucille Packard Foundation and the Roth Family Foundation.

© copyright 1996-2008, Guttmacher Institute

 RSS  ::  contact  ::  statement of accuracy  ::  privacy policy  ::  help