Long-Lasting Birth Control Is Already Hard to Get. Advocates Worry It May Only Get Worse

When Rachel, a 35-year-old from Colorado, learned four years ago that she was pregnant despite taking birth control pills, she wanted to make sure it didn’t happen again. The stakes were high: in addition to not wanting kids, she has a uterine deformity that makes pregnancy risky. She terminated the pregnancy, then began looking for long-lasting birth control. Rachel (who asked to use only her first name to preserve her privacy) lives in a rural part of Colorado where the only local health system is Catholic and doesn’t offer most forms of contraception under the Ethical and Religious Directives for hospitals. Even though Rachel had been receiving care there for years, her provider could only refer her to a women’s health clinic an hour away when she asked about birth control methods like diaphragms and intrauterine devices (IUDs). [time-brightcove not-tgx=”true”] Though she was initially interested in reversible methods of contraception, Rachel ultimately decided to have her fallopian tubes removed—a type of permanent sterilization—when she made the trip to the women’s health clinic. “My first impulse when [my husband and I] got home was, ‘I need to tell every woman I know to check your local health system. If it’s faith-based, you need to figure out what that means for you,’” Rachel says. “We found out the hard way.” Birth control is harder to get in the U.S. than it should be. Many op...
Source: TIME: Health - Category: Consumer Health News Authors: Tags: Uncategorized healthscienceclimate medicine Source Type: news