Preventive health services: Family planning

Abstract

Family planning in the United States has been a noteworthy success. More than 80 percent of the married women aged 15 to 44 are regular users of contraceptives. Further, virtually all primary care physicians provide contraceptives or family planning services, and there are now an estimated 4,000 family planning clinics in the country receiving support under the Title X Family Planning Authority. Despite this record of success, serious family planning problems remain. Of the slightly more than three and one half million births, an estimated one million are unplanned. More than one million pregnancies are terminated by legal abortion. Certain subgroups of the population have disproportionately high risks of unintended pregnancy. For example, unplanned births are almost twice as frequent among poor as among nonpoor women; one of every four births to black women is unintended versus one in ten to white women; and teenagers, women with language barriers, and women living in rural areas and on Indian reservations experience high rates of unintended pregnancy.