Newsflash: Women Really Benefit From Contraception

A new study confirms the obvious: women use contraception to better achieve their life goals, not because they’re lazy, godless sluts.

Few studies had ever actually asked women why they use contraception, so the consistently fantastic Guttmacher Institute decided to do just that by surveying 2,094 women on how they’ve benefited from family planning services. Here’s what they found:

The majority of participants reported that contraception has had a significant impact on their lives, allowing them to take better care of themselves or their families (63%), support themselves financially (56%), complete their education (51%), or keep or get a job (50%).

When asked why they are seeking contraceptive services now, women expressed concerns about the consequences of an unintended pregnancy on their families’ and their own lives. The single most frequently cited reason for using contraception was that women could not afford to take care of a baby at that time (65%). Nearly one in four women reported that they or their partners were unemployed, which was a very important reason for their contraceptive use. Among women with children, nearly all reported that their desire to care for their current children was a reason for contraceptive use.

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Other reasons for using contraception, reported by a majority of respondents, include not being ready to have children (63%), feeling that using birth control gives them better control over their lives (60%) and wanting to wait until their lives are more stable to have a baby (60%).

No woman surveyed said she used the pill as part of a cohesive satanic plot to kill as many “unborn angels” as possible. Weird!

“Notably, the reasons women give for using contraception are similar to the reasons they give for seeking an abortion,” said Lawrence B. Finer, who led a previous Guttmacher study on the topic. “This means we should see access to abortion in the broader context of women’s lives and their efforts to avoid unplanned childbearing, in light of its potential consequences for them and their families.”