Clutch Magazine: Poor Women Find Diminishing Reproductive Choices

Image by the Guttmacher Institute. Click to enlarge.In a recent post for Clutch Magazine Online, I tackled the plight of poor women who deal with tougher choices when it comes to sex, children, family planning and birth control than their better off, insurance having counterparts. The reality -- that no one likes to talk about when they're passing judgment -- is that half of all U.S. women, regardless of race or class status, before turning 45 will have at least one an unplanned pregnancy. The main difference between the sexual habits of the poor and the not-so-poor isif you're better off financially, have insurance or live in an area with better access to health care services your reproductive choices stay between you and a doctor and can be dealt with quickly.

Poor women, don't have the same options, so they're becoming the "face" of abortion due to being underserved by family planning programs. 

Here's a snippet:

But by simply having better access to health care, lower cost birth control, and a more understanding workplace that realizes employees – even low wage, service employees – need medical time off, could have solved this. It could have created a situation where a woman didn’t need an abortion, or could deal with her unwanted pregnancy earlier. But instead, we have a system that doesn’t help women make better reproductive choices. It leaves them trapped in them.

Read the full post on Clutch Magazine Online.

Comments

[Mallory]

How hard is it to not get pregnant? If you cannot afford to have a baby, or don't WANT to have a baby, don't have sex. At a minimum, one should ALWAYS use multiple forms of contraception if you just have to have some sex. The cost of uninsured birth control medication pales in comparison to the cost of terminating a pregnancy, and is infinitesimal compared to having an actual baby. Why do people feel like they should get to have irresponsible sex and then should be coddled and sympathized with when they end up with an wanted pregnancy. Proper sex education and emphasizing personal responsibility (for men and women, as no one person is more at fault) is sorely needed.