Women Say They Were Pressured Into Long-Term Birth Control - TIME

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In the last two decades, doctors have encouraged women to choose long-acting reversible contraceptives, or LARCs, because they are the most effective method of preventing unplanned pregnancies. Doctors and many patients like that LARCs–either IUDs, which are inserted in a woman’s uterus, or implants, which are inserted in a woman’s arm–allow women to “set it and forget it” for years. But an increasing body of evidence indicates that an important public health tool intended to give women agency over their bodies is at times deployed in ways that take it away.

A TIME investigation based on patient testimonials, medical studies, and interviews with 19 experts in the field of reproductive justice, including physicians, researchers, and advocates, found that doctors are disproportionately likely to push these contraceptives when treating Black, Latina, young, and low-income women, or to refuse to remove them when requested. This pattern, reproductive-justice experts say, reflects the race and class biases plaguing the U.S. medical system and extends a sordid and long-standing history of America’s attempts to engineer who reproduces. It also reflects what appears to be a broad push by policymakers to use birth control as a tool to curb poverty.

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Doctors pressuring patients into getting LARCs is a national phenomenon, experts say, but it may be especially prevalent in the South, where there is a troubling history of reproductive control. To explore what women are experiencing, TIME spoke with 10 women in Alabama, including four patients at UAB Hospital, who said they were pressured to get an IUD postpartum or had their doctors refuse to remove the devices when they initially asked. Four doulas who work in the state told TIME they’d witnessed doctors pressure Black women, especially those on Medicaid, into getting IUDs by asking them repeatedly during birth—but not, according to their clients, prior to it—about their preferred birth-control method and then strongly suggesting an IUD.

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In the wake of the Supreme Court’s 2022 Dobbs decision, which overturned the constitutional right to an abortion, the question of just how widespread this pressure may be takes on greater urgency. Research shows that doctors in states with restrictive abortion laws are redoubling their emphasis on the use of LARCs. These may be well-meaning attempts to help women and teens avoid a pregnancy they don’t want and would not have the option to terminate. But reproductive-justice advocates say pushing LARCs on poor women or women of color is also a form of reproductive control. It can not only strip patients of autonomy over their bodies, but also erode their trust in medical providers, causing them to withdraw from care and eschew birth control altogether.

More (a loat more)

https://time.com/6976918/long-term-birth-control-reproductive-coercion/