Free Birth Control Connected To Drop In Abortions, Teen Pregnancy, Study Finds

A new study has revealed that a four-year experiment to offer free birth control to St. Louis, Missouri women correlated with decreased rates in teen pregnancy and repeat abortions, Reuters reported.

The project, which was started in 2007, was set to discover the benefits of mandatory insurance coverage for contraception. Lead author Dr. Jeffrey Peipert, a professor at Washington University School of Medicine in St. Louis, told Reuters, "We believe that this is a major step to reducing unintended pregnancy in the United States."

According to Peipert's study, there are one million unintended births each year, which costs tax payers $11 billion. Reuters reported that the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention found that there were 825,000 abortions in the U.S. in 2008.

While birth control can prevent unwanted pregnancies, women who want to use birth control face a variety of hurdles to use them. One of the biggest obstacles is cost, which Peipert said stops many women from using them.

In order to remove some obstacles, Peipert and his colleagues began the Contraceptive CHOICE Project with the help of the Susan Thompson Buffett Foundation. The project offered 9,256 women their choice of FDA-approved contraceptives between 2007 and 2011, Reuters reported. 

According to the study, 63 percent of participants had had an unintentional pregnancy in the past and 41 percent had had an abortion. Reuters reported that 75 percent of women in the project chose a long-acting contraception method.

Peipert's study then found that abortions, repeat abortions and teen pregnancy rates all declined in St. Louis, where their study was taking place. Between 2008 and 2010, the rate of abortions in the city dropped 20 percent, the study found.

Reuters reported that the number of repeat abortions also dropped from 47 percent in 2006 to 39 percent in 2010. That was not the case in Kansas City, Missouri, where repeat abortions rose from 46 percent in 2006 to 51 percent in 2010.

The study found that teen pregnancy rates among teen girls, ages 15 to 19, enrolled in the program was much lower than the national average. According to Reuters, girls in the program averaged a teenage pregnancy rate of 6.3 per 1,000 girls, whereas nationally they average 34 per 1,000 girls.

While Peipert states that his study cannot link improve birth control access to a decline in abortions and teen pregnancies, he told Reuters he hopes that the Affordable Care Act will make long-acting birth control more accessible to women.

Cynthia Harper, a professor at the University of California, San Francisco not involved in the study, told Reuters, "It is possible for us, with our current medical knowledge and evidence and clinical services, to address the unintended pregnancy rate in the U.S."

"The unintended pregnancy rate has been high for decades, and this shows we can make progress and it's not beyond our grasp," Harper added.