According to the National Survey of Family Growth conducted by the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention’s National Center for Health Statistics, nearly two-thirds of American women use contraception. In lay terms: A lot of people don’t wanna get pregnant.
Polling 5,500 women ranging from ages 15 to 49 between 2015-2017, the study found that nearly 65 percent of women used some birth control method “in the month they were interviewed,” CNN reports. That’s up from 61.6 percent in the years spanning 2011-2015.
The most common contraceptive method in the study was female sterilization, or tube tying, with 18.6 percent of women revealing to have had the surgery. It’s most common in an older crowd, used by 39 percent of women 40-49, 21.5 percent in women 30 to 39 and only 4 percent in women 20 to 29.
Next in popularity was the pill, used mostly by women 16-29; followed by long-acting contraception like injections, IUDs and subdermal contraceptive implants (favored by women 20 – 39); then male condoms and other procedures, like vasectomies, contraceptive rings, birth control shots, etc. It’s truly amazing how there are so many choices for women to avoid pregnancy, but only sterilization and condoms for men. Let’s get that male birth control pill in here, stat. Read the full report here.