About 35 percent of U.S. women ages 15 to 49 said they received a family planning service between 2022 to 2023, according to a new report from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention’s (CDC) National Center for Health Statistics.
The most common services received that year were getting a birth control method or prescription and attending a birth control checkup, according to the report.
Nearly a quarter of women who received a family planning service — 23.5 percent — said they obtained a birth control method or prescription, and 19.5 percent said they received a birth control checkup.
Another 17.1 percent of women said they received birth control counseling, 3.7 percent said they obtained emergency contraception and 2.8 percent received counseling on emergency contraception.
A very small portion of women — 1.6 percent — said they underwent sterilization that year.
Women in their 20s were more likely to receive family planning services than teenagers and those in their 30s and 40s.
The report shows that 45.3 percent of women in their 20s said they obtained a family planning service between 2022 and 2023. Meanwhile, 37 percent of 15- to 19-year-olds, 36.3 percent of women in their 30s, and 24.4 percent of women in their 40s reported the same.
Women in their 20s were also the most likely to have gotten a birth control method or prescription that year — 31.5 percent — followed by teenagers at 23.7. Slightly fewer women in their 30s received a birth control method or prescription — 22.9 percent — and 15.7 percent of women in their 40s reported the same.
The new data comes as reproductive health advocates and experts prepare for possible cuts to the federal family planning program commonly referred to as Title X under the forthcoming Trump administration.
Roughly 4 million people a year relied on Title X funds to receive birth control and reproductive health care services before President-elect Trump’s first term in the White House, according to Planned Parenthood.
In 2019, the Trump administration rolled out new rules that stopped clinics receiving Title X funds from referring people to abortion services and required the “physical separation of family planning and abortion services,” according to the nonprofit health organization KFF.
That move essentially disqualified hundreds of family planning clinics from receiving funding under the program. The Biden administration reversed the regulation in 2021, but health experts fear it could come back.
“That is an area where we could see that type of activity again,” Usha Ranji, associate director of women’s health policy at KFF, told The Hill.
