United States: A new report which hereby shows that most women in the United States haven’t been getting birth control prescriptions or also other family planning services in recent years. Family planning is an important part of healthcare, and it also includes things like birth control, emergency contraception, sterilization, and advisory for all these services.
The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) says and these services are essential for women’s health, especially as abortion restrictions have been growing.
Such visits may be the only contact women have with the health care sector and where access is compromised health will suffer. Research also points out that these services also assist in averting over 1·5 million unintended pregnancies in USA alone each year.
Still, in 2022 and 2023, just 35.7% of women of reproductive age reported having accessed FP services within the preceding year, based on survey information included in a CDC report released Wednesday.
As reported by the CNN, it was in June this year when the US Supreme Court’s Dobbs decision eliminated the federal constitutional protection to abortion. Alabama is one of the over a dozen states today that have enacted near complete abortion bans following the Dobbs decision.
Under the new state law, WAWC Healthcare – formerly the West Alabama Women’s Center – would need to adapt Its executive director, Robin Marty, knew that if her center had to cease offering abortions, she wanted the focus turned to other services…
“When we were doing abortion, we realized that many of the patients presenting to us were presenting because they had got pregnant due to lack of access to any form of contraception,” Marty said.
“And if a person desires to have his or her body been respected if he or she decides not to have children or to have one after a certain age or period of time, then that is supported at all stages of childbearing.”
The Abortion Care Network report says that since 2022’s Dobbs decision, 76 independent clinics across the United States have been forced to shut down or have stopped offering abortion services, including WAWC. Currently, there are 14 states that are without abortion care clinics at all.