Where Can You Get Publicly Funded Contraception in the US?

Without "socialized" (i.e., publicly funded) health services in the United States, health levels would be even worse than they are (remember that we pay more person than any other country for health care, but have worse health outcomes than almost every other rich country in the world). One area where this is important is in the provision of contraception to women who need it. The Guttmacher Institute has just put out a new report--with interactive maps--summarizing what's happening.

A total of 6.2 million women received publicly supported contraceptive services from 10,700 clinics in the United States in 2015. Clinics funded by the federal Title X program served 3.8 million of these women. An estimated 2.4 million additional women received Medicaid-funded contraceptive services from private doctors.

Services provided by clinics that received Title X funding helped women avert 822,300 unintended pregnancies in 2015, thus preventing 387,200 unplanned births and 277,800 abortions. Without the services provided by Title X–funded clinics, the U.S. unintended pregnancy rate would have been 31% higher and the rate among teens would have been 44% higher.

Those numbers speak for themselves about the importance of these services.