According to a new research of the government, American women are still ignoring the most effective methods of birth control in favor of the pill and sterilization.
The team at the National Center for Health Statistics found that women almost universally use birth control of some sort, but 60 percent of these women are currently using contraception and 99 percent of women who have ever had sexual intercourse have used it at some point.
And survey found that the number of women using the most reliable methods which are the intrauterine devices, or IUDs, implantable or injectable hormones, have doubled to nearly 12 percent between 2006 and 2013. The team at NCHS which is part of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention made surveys using more than 10,000 men and women taken between 2011 and 2013.
The survey found that among women currently using contraception, the pill is the most commonly used having 25.9 percent or 9.7 million women, female sterilization came second with 25.1 percent, or 9.4 million women, next is the male condom with 15.3 percent, or 5.8 million women, and lastly the long-acting reversible contraception (LARC) which is the intrauterine devices or contraceptive implants came last with only 11.6 percent, or 4.4 million women of the total subjects.
They also added that the percentage of all women aged 15-44 using LARC increased from 3.8 percent to 7.2 percent between 2006-2010 and 2011-2013. And nearly 5 percent said they used withdrawal as a birth control method even though it is considered extremely ineffective.
The CDC has been pushing more women to use implants or IUDs, however women are unsure whether they'd embrace it or not. Programs that fund such methods for women have been successful, but have a hard time getting funding for it.
The 2010 Affordable Care Act requires that health insurers pay for a woman's contraception, but the Supreme Court continues to hear legal challenges to the requirement.
