Study Finds 37% of Births in US Unintended - as part of the news series by GeoBeats.
Is there anything more degrading than your parents telling you that you were conceived as a mistake? Well according to data collected in a study done the United States Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, 37 percent of births in the United States are the result of unintended, or accidental pregnancies. The percent of babies born into this circumstance has been pretty consistent for over thirty years, since studies done by the National Survey of Family Growth in 1982. Around half of these unplanned babies are caused by the misuse of contraceptives, like condoms and birth control pills, but almost half of couples do not use contraception at all, with 36 percent of those women claiming they thought they still couldn’t get pregnant.
"Here we are with various means of effective birth control at our fingertips, but it's not reaching the population that needs it the most," said Sheryl Kingsberg, a professor of reproductive biology at University Hospitals Case Medical Center.
The birth rate in the US would drop by an annual 580 thousand people if mothers didn’t give birth to their unwanted babies. Only 17 percent of college educated women had an unplanned pregnancy, and 23 percent of married couples had children unintentionally.
