Prior to the 2010 Congressional elections, I shared here my sense that were the House and state houses to be overtaken by the far Right, the Right would not only go after Roe v. Wade (as it has in dozens of state legislatures), but I suggested that they'd go after the right to contraception. I wasn't mistaken. While I'm certain I wasn't the only person to predict this accurately, I'll add one more prediction.

     This will go down as a classic over-reach, just as is the attempt by the same people to drag us back to a pre-New Deal America scattering Medicare and Social Security to the wind.

     The Guttmacher Institute is perhaps the most respected independent organization regularly studying women's health issues.

     In this report from 2010--its latest comprehensive one-- Guttmacher explains who uses contraception and for what purposes.

     There are reasons those who attack contraception, those who would overturn Griswold v. Connecticut, the landmark 1965 Supreme Court decision that declared states may not criminalize contraception...there are reasons they will lose. Many of those reasons are embedded here, in this report.

     Lots of stats--read at your leisure. I'm interested in your sense of it all.

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WHO NEEDS CONTRACEPTIVES?

• There are 62 million U.S. women in their childbearing years (15–44).

• Seven in 10 women of reproductive age (43 million women) are sexually active and do not want to become pregnant, but could become pregnant if they and their partners fail to use a contraceptive method.

• The typical U.S. woman wants only two children. To achieve this goal, she must use contraceptives for roughly three decades.

WHO USES CONTRACEPTIVES?

• Virtually all women (more than 99%) aged 15–44 who have ever had sexual intercourse have used at least one contraceptive method.

• Overall, 62% of the 62 million women aged 15–44 are currently using a method.

• Almost one-third (31%) of these 62 million women do not need a method because they are infertile; are pregnant, postpartum or trying to become pregnant; have never had intercourse; or are not sexually active.

• Thus, only 7% of women aged 15–44 are at risk for unintended pregnancy but are not using contraceptives.

• Among the 43 million fertile, sexually active women who do not want to become pregnant, 89% are practicing contraception.

WHICH METHODS DO WOMEN

USE?

• Sixty-three percent of reproductive-age women who practice contraception use nonpermanent methods, including hormonal methods (such as the pill, patch, implant, injectable and vaginal ring), the IUD and condoms. The remaining women rely on female or male sterilization.[2]

• Contraceptive choices vary markedly with age. For women younger than 30, the pill is the leading method.  Among women aged 30 and older, more rely on sterilization.[2]

• The pill and female sterilization have been the two leading contraceptive methods in the United States since 1982. However, sterilization is the most common method among black and Hispanic women, while white women mostly commonly choose the pill.

• Female sterilization is most commonly relied on by women who are aged 35 or older, women who are currently or have previously been married, women with two or more children, women below 150% of the federal poverty level and women with less than a college education.

• Half of all women aged 40–44 who practice contraception have been sterilized, and another 20% have a partner who has had a vasectomy.

• The pill is the method most widely used by women who are in their teens and 20s, women who are cohabiting, women with no children and women with at least a college degree.

• Some 6.2 million women rely on the male condom.[4] Condom use is especially common among teens and women in their 20s, women with one or no children and women with at least a college education.

• Dual methods (most often the condom combined with another method) are used by 13.5% of contraceptive users. The proportions using more than one method are greatest among teenagers and never-married women.[2]

TEEN CONTRACEPTIVE USE

• Teenagers (aged 15–19) who do not use a contraceptive at first sex are twice as likely to become teen mothers as are teenagers who use a method.

• Twenty-three percent of teenage women using contraceptives choose condoms as their primary method. Condom use is higher among women aged 20–24 and is lower among older and married women.

• Of the 2.9 million teenage women who use contraceptives, 54%—more than 1.5 million women—rely on the pill.

TRENDS IN CONTRACEPTIVE USE

• The proportion of women aged 15–44 currently using a contraceptive method increased from 56% in 1982 to 64% in 1995, and then declined slightly to 62% in 2002 and 2006–2008.

• Among all women, 7% were at risk of unwand pregnancy but not using a method in 2006–2008, an increase from 5% in 1995.

• Among just those women who are sexually active and able to become pregnant but do not want to become pregnant, 11% are not using contraceptives. That number is much higher among teens aged 15–19 (19%) and lower among older women aged 40–44 (8%).

• The proportion of women using contraceptives who rely on condoms decreased between 1995 and 2006–2008 from 20% to 16%. However, use was still higher in 2006–2008 than it was in 1988.

• Between 1995 and 2002, the share of users relying on the pill increased slightly, from 27% to 31%, but it declined slightly, to 28%, in 2006–2008.

• In 2006–2008, 27% of contraceptive users relied on female sterilization, compared with 23% in 1982.[funded family planning clinic.

• The proportion of all users relying on the IUD has increased substantially, from less than 1% in 1995, to 2% in 2002, to 5.5% in 2006–2008.

WHO PAYS FOR CONTRACEPTION?

• One-quarter of the more than 20 million American women who obtain contraceptive services from a medical provider receive care from a publicly funded family planning clinic.

• In 2008, 7.2 million women, including 1.8 million teenagers, received contraceptive services from publicly funded family planning clinics in the United States.

• Federal employees are guaranteed insurance coverage for contraceptives.

• Nine in 10 employer-based insurance plans cover a full range of prescription contraceptives, which is three times the proportion that did so just a decade ago.

• Twenty-seven states now have laws in place requiring insurers that cover prescription drugs in general to provide coverage for the full range of contraceptive drugs and devices approved by the Food and Drug Administration.

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