About half of the 6.7 million pregnancies in the United States each year are unintended. For women and families, births resulting from unintended pregnancies have been linked to adverse maternal and child health outcomes and myriad social and economic challenges. Births stemming from unintended pregnancy are also costly to the federal and state governments, resulting in $11 billion in government expenditures in 2006.
To provide a one-stop resource and comprehensive overview, the Guttmacher Institute is launching a new tool that offers more than two dozen state-specific indicators related to unintended pregnancy, including:
- The incidence and outcomes of unintended pregnancy in each state, including the proportion of all pregnancies that are unintended; the rates of unintended pregnancy; the proportions of unintended pregnancies that result in births and abortions; and the proportion of all births resulting from unintended pregnancy;
- The public cost of unintended pregnancy in each state, including the proportion of births resulting from unintended pregnancy that were publicly funded; the cost of births resulting from unintended pregnancies to the federal and state governments; and the total public cost for births resulting from unintended pregnancies per woman aged 15–44;
- The impact in each state of publicly funded family planning services, including the number of contraceptive clients served by publicly supported family planning centers; public expenditures for family planning services from Medicaid, Title X and other sources; the number of unintended pregnancies, births and abortions averted by these services; and the resulting savings to the federal and state governments.
"These state fact sheets detail the impact unintended pregnancy has on women, families and society overall," says Adam Sonfield, senior public policy associate at Guttmacher, who led the team that developed the fact sheets. "They are a comprehensive resource that documents the significant state-level benefits of investing in publicly funded family planning services, both in helping women avert unintended pregnancies, births and abortions, and generating considerable savings to the federal and state governments."
Click here for State Facts about Unintended Pregnancy
Also see these additional resources:
Facts on Unintended Pregnancy in the United States
Facts on Publicly Funded Contraceptive Services in the United States
Guttmacher's State Center
Guttmacher's Data Center
Video: Benefits of Contraceptive Use in the United States