Puzzling Over the Hurt Down-Under
Serious Mental Illness and Contraception
New 13-Cycle Vaginal Contraceptive System
The Future of Family Planning in Post-COVID America
New ASCCP Guidelines: Implications for FP
On the alert: mood disorders during 2020 stressors
Challenges old and new during the pandemic
Reproductive health in the time of Covid-19
Missed Pills: The Problem That Hasn’t Gone Away
Find the “yes! . . . and” rather than “no” or “but”
Digital Family Planning: the Future is Now
Irregular Bleeding Due to Contraceptives
Ouch! Best approaches to menstrual pain
Contraceptive efficacy: understanding how user and method characteristics play their part
Strategizing treatment for chronic heavy menstrual bleeding
Untangling the literature on obesity and contraception
High tech apps for no-tech FABM
Menstrual exacerbation of other medical conditions
From Princeton University: Thomas James Trussell (1949-2018)
The Short and Long of IUD Use Duration
Selecting a Method When Guidance Isn’t Clear-cut
Healthcare in the Time of Digital Expansion
The Scoop on Two New FDA-Approved Contraceptive Methods
Pregnancy of unknown location—meeting the challenge
Big “yes” (with caveats) to CHCs during perimenopause
The role of IUDs (LNG IUDs, too!) in emergency contraception
Combined pills’ effect on mood disorders
Abortion in the U.S.: safe, declining, and under threat
Hope for ovarian cancer screening test
Breast cancer still a small risk with some hormonal contraceptives
Record rate of HPV-related throat cancer
Viruses in semen potentially transmissible
Don’t Abstain from Your Role in Abstinence
Teens births declining but geographic ‘hotspots’ defy trend
Online Medical Abortion Service Effective and Safe
Do Women Really Need to Wait That Long?
Reassuring news on depression and OC use
PMDD: Genetic clues may lead to improved treatment
Breast cancer risk when there is a family history
Body weight link to breast and endometrial cancers (and 11 others)
Family Planning in 2017 and Beyond
Make Me Cry: Depression Link (Again)?
Managing implant users’ bleeding and spotting
Zika: Updated guidance for providers
Pharmacist-prescribed contraceptives
Hot off the press! 2016 MEC and SPR
Zika virus fears prompt increased request for abortion in nations outlawing abortions
Opioid use epidemic among reproductive-age women
Good news on the family planning home front!
War Against Planned Parenthood Hurts Women
Win-win for both treatment and prevention
Menopause, mood, mental acuity, and hormone therapy
Emergency contraception for teens
Postpartum Contraception: Now, Not Later
Are we practicing what we preach?
Be alert to VTE in hormonal contraceptive users
LARC among teens increased 15-fold, but not enough
Brain cancer and hormonal contraception
Free tools: Easy access to the US Medical Eligibility Criteria for Contraceptive Use
Alcohol consumption when pregnancy is unwanted or unintended
Latest Data on Contraceptive Use in the United States
LateBreaker sampler from Contraceptive Technology conference
Emergency Contraceptive Pill Efficacy and BMI/Body Weight
Handout on Unintended Pregnancy and Contraceptive Choice
Ask About Withdrawal (Really!)
Rules to Practice By: Safety First and Cleanliness is Close to. . .
What’s Vanity Fair Got Against the NuvaRing?
Promising New Treatment for Hepatitis C
Numbers matter, so make them simple for patients
The Recession’s Effect on Unintended Pregnancies
Lessons Learned from the Contraceptive CHOICE Project: The Hull LARC Initiative
Applying the “New” Cervical Cytology Guidelines in Your Practice
Acute Excessive Uterine Bleeding: New Management Strategies
Medical indications for IUD use in teens

As the Covid-19 pandemic grips the nation, health care providers continue to deliver excellent services to patients, many at substantial risk to their own well-being and well-ordered lives. Even outside the direct-care services for patients infected with the virus, providers face varying degrees of risk of contagion, and they carry on. These are the bright, dedicated, and courageous faces in the pandemic.
The shadowy face, however, is evident in structural fault lines in the health care infrastructure: the crises due to health-care-resource shortfalls and systemic inequities giving rise to health disparities. These are not new problems, just ones that have become more apparent under pressure. These problems are ones with which professionals working in reproductive health care are all too familiar—poor access, poor to no insurance coverage, lack of affordability, and barriers everywhere.
Stark recognition and acknowledgement of these problems offer the opportunity to do something about them. We can each contribute a voice to their importance and perhaps to their solutions, or at least amelioration. And it is even more crucial that those of us working in reproductive health care make our voices heard, because forces are at work to throw up more barriers in our field, even as the Covid-19 pandemic grips the nation and an ensuing recession threatens to exacerbate inequities.[1]
The urgent pressures brought to bear by the Covid-19 pandemic may be providing cover to steadily ongoing efforts to undermine reproductive health care. Once again, dissenters will be presenting arguments to the U.S. Supreme Court to restrict contraceptive coverage through the Affordable Care Act.[2] Anti-contraceptive policy makers and employers want sweeping new regulations allowing wide-ranging exceptions for businesses, schools, and insurers who hold objections to the ACA contraceptive provisions. Appeals courts had blocked the new regulations, so the argument advances to the U.S. Supreme Court. We have yet to learn the impact from the changing tenor of the Court, whose justices will need to examine whether their legal decisions are influenced by personal beliefs about the value of women’s access to medical drugs and devices that allow them to determine their family needs and desires.
Additionally, according to the ACLU, the distraction of the Covid-19 pandemic is exactly the cover to accomplish a long-held policy objective of lawmakers opposed to reproductive rights—eliminating access to abortion care.[3] While most states have allowed medical professionals to determine what is essential or non-essential for patients’ health, several states prohibited time-sensitive abortion services. The prohibition included not only surgical procedures, but it also specifically banned medication abortion. As these states are beginning to lift restrictions, the threat to abortion services will remain. Even before the pandemic, in 2019 alone, states passed 59 new restrictions on access.
These are tough times, and with the current challenges imposed by the Covid-19 pandemic and by those who choose to use it as an excuse to promote an outside agenda, it may be feel hard to be hopeful or to feel that what you do is appreciated.
For many areas in clinical medicine, the value of their services is not questioned or impugned. Over the years, the authors of Contraceptive Technology have drawn upon the insights of our long-time colleague, Felicia Stewart, whom we continue to miss dearly.[4] We share here some of her inspirational words:[5]
“Becoming an expert on heart disease management has self-evident value, and is not controversial. The value of work as a heart disease clinician is not likely to be attacked as immoral, and heart problems are not likely to be cared out for special scrutiny as expenditures by public health services. The local town council or school board is not likely to ask the local heart specialist to testify about proposed local policies. Unfortunately, this is not true for clinicians working in the field of family planning services and reproductive health.
“When we talk with patients about their sexual and reproductive health, counsel patients about their contraceptive options, provide abortion care to patients who have decided to terminate an unintended pregnancy, work to shape public policy, or contribute to reproductive health research, we are engaged in a critically important and deeply moral undertaking.
“Reproductive health care reflects a deep commitment to the moral importance of parenthood and children. Our work helps ensure that every pregnancy is [wanted] and as safe as possible, and that children are born when their parents are best able to provide the love and support they need to thrive. In sum, reproductive health care makes an essential contribution to the human infrastructure we count on for our society’s wellbeing, opportunity, security, freedom.
“As scientists, clinicians, and educators, we may not be accustomed to talking about values and the spiritual aspects of what we do. But despite our shyness, we need to do a better job of explaining our own moral values as we work with colleagues and patients—we need to teach the why as well as the what, when, how, and science of reproductive health. Otherwise, it is easy to understand how the moral high ground has increasingly seemed to belong to those who oppose efforts to provide reproductive health care. For many of us, the moral importance of our work is its most compelling appeal, and it helps sustain us in the face of political and economic challenges.”
To all, be safe; be well. Thank you for all you do.
[1] https://nwlc-ciw49tixgw5lbab.stackpathdns.com/wp-content/uploads/2020/03/NWLC_FactSheet_COVIDxRepro.pdf
[2] https://www.guttmacher.org/article/2020/01/acas-birth-control-benefit-back-supreme-court
[3] https://www.aclu.org/news/reproductive-freedom/the-battle-for-abortion-access-is-in-the-states
[4] Felicia Hance Stewart, 1943-2006. Formerly: co-director, UCSF Center for Reproductive health research & policy; director of reproductive health programs, Henry J Kaiser Family Foundation; deputy assistant secretary of population affairs, U.S. Public Health Service.
[5] Stewart FH. Preface. In: Hatcher RA, Trussell J, Stewart FH, et al. Contraceptive technology. 18th revised edition. New York: Ardent Media, Inc., 2004.