Facts on Publicly Funded Contraceptive Services in the US

Monday November 2, 2009

According to the latest report by the Guttmacher Institute, the average American woman, who wants two children, spends about five years pregnant, postpartum or trying to become pregnant, and three decades (more than 3/4ths of her reproductive life) trying to avoid pregnancy. In 2006:

There were 66.4 million women in the US of reproductive age US
More than half (36.2) of these women were in need of contraceptive services and supplies
Of the 36.2 million who needed birth control, 17.5 million were in need of publicly funded services and supplies because they either had an income below 250% of the federal poverty level or were younger than 20

The importance of publicly funded family planning centers can be seen in the fact that one-quarter of US women and half of poor women all received care at publicly funded family planning centers in 2006. Publicly funded family planning services help women to avoid pregnancies they do not want and to plan pregnancies they do. In 2006, these services helped women avoid 1.94 million unintended pregnancies, which would likely have resulted in about 860,000 unintended births and 810,000 abortions.

Read the Full Guttmacher Institute Report: Facts on Publicly Funded Contraceptive Services in the United States

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