Maternal Health: Family Planning

Part III

Planned Parenthood is a big fan of family planning. Whoot Whoot! It’s also an organization that supports maternal health, so it only makes sense that when these two issues intersect I would try and make a big deal about it. Here’s the connection as explained by Carolina Reyes, Clinical Associate Professor of Obstetrics and Gynecology at USC, “Effective family planning services are probably the single largest contributor to reduction in maternal mortality and morbidity in our lifetime.” Basically, limited access to family planning is a huge reason why the United States has such high maternal mortality rates and poor overall maternal health care.

Half of all pregnancies in the United States are unintended- a huge number of accidents. Women who have unplanned pregnancies are much more likely to suffer complications and generally receive less prenatal care than women with intentional pregnancies because they start it much later into their pregnancy. A couple hundred of the women who die from maternal health complications every year are women who should not have gotten pregnant in the first place because of their existing medical conditions. From the very beginning, these women have a high risk pregnancy, putting themselves and their babies in danger.

Minorities and women with low incomes have a high risk of dying from maternal complications and not receiving proper maternal health care. These groups also have the highest rates of unplanned pregnancies. African Americans who are almost four times more likely to die from pregnancy related complications are also three times more likely to have unplanned pregnancies than white women. Women with low incomes are four times more likely to have unplanned pregnancies than women with high incomes. This is at least partially related to these groups’ ability to access family planning services.

Currently, 17.5 million women who need reproductive services because they are sexually active and able to conceive but do not want to become pregnant rely must rely on public health services. Too often, however, publicly funded services are unable to provide the needed care, services and supplies because of budgetary or legal restrictions. Programs like Medicaid are regulated by the government and restricted from covering abortions and have the ability to limit certain woman’s access to reproductive services and contraception. In other cases, clinics or programs just don’t have the funded to provide contraceptives or care to everyone who needs it. The barriers women face in receiving reproductive care and family planning services leaves up to 8 million women in our country without affordable family planning services.

The methods to achieve this are practices Planned Parenthood has been implementing for years including improving sexual education about reproductive health and contraceptives, increasing access to contraceptive and abortion services and increasing funding for title X clinics. All of these will contribute to promoting safe sex and pregnancy prevention, especially among the most at risk groups. Reducing the number of unplanned pregnancies is a key part in reducing the maternal mortality rates in the United States. Just another reason to support Planned Parenthood and the great things it’s trying to accomplish.