The Contraception Failure

Vanessa Valenti examines why unintended pregnancies occur in the United States , a country where most women use contraceptives during most of their child-bearing years.

Nearly all American women will use contraception at some point in their
lives. Birth control is the most effective way to lower the unintended pregnancy
rate, and the best way to decrease the abortion rate. But in an increasingly
polarized political debate about abortion rights, anti-contraception sentiments
have crept in. Sometimes they are blatant -- earlier this June for example,
anti-choice groups sponsored a national day of protest against the birth control
pill. But usually, they are more insidious and come in the form of
systematically and routinely denying women access to contraception. The grounds
of the reproductive rights debate are shifting -- and most Americans don't seem
to know it.