Fewer women having unwanted or untimely pregnancies, analysis reveals
Fewer babies are being born in North Carolina now than a decade or two ago, state health data shows.
What's happening in our state is following the trend nationwide.
A new data analysis shows it's becoming less common for women to get pregnant when they don’t want to be. Researchers are finding access to birth control could be a factor.
It is part of a paper published by researchers at the Guttmacher Institute - a policy group aimed at expanding reproductive rights. For the first time, we’re getting an understanding of the sentiment behind pregnancy and timing.
The researchers focused on the time span from 2009 to 2015 and found that most women thought they had children and got pregnant at the right time. It shows that fewer women also feel they got pregnant too soon or when they didn’t want it to happen.
The paper reveals the change in younger people getting pregnant is associated with the decrease in the share of women reporting they didn’t want to be pregnant or it happened too soon. Meanwhile, it also found more women, especially those who are 35 and up - said they were having children later than they wanted.
Nationwide, the birth rate has been increasing among 35 to 44 year olds.
The data trackers looked at state birth rate data changes from 2000 to 2020, which is the the most recent year data is available and found the same trend here. There has been an increase in that age group as well as 30 to 34 year olds but a decrease in rates for people in their 20s.
The research completed by the Guttmacher Institute indicates that women are managing the timing of their pregnancies more. The group which conducted the analysis also strongly suggests that the birth rate drop wasn't just a temporary delay linked to the Great Recession but instead it corresponds with a cultural shift in what women want all while access to birth control increased.
"Such improvements in access to contraception likely mean that more pregnancies were successfully prevented among those who were specifically looking to postpone childbearing, whether for their first birth or subsequent ones," researchers wrote in their analysis.
As we've reported teen pregnancies are down too. The overall decline in these unwanted pregnancies appears is driven by women under 25, research shows.
"A lot of people [who are] younger interact more behind the screen of a digital device and so there's maybe less in-person interaction," said Dr. Jenna Beckham, a Triangle-area Ob-GYN.
The paper reveals the change in younger people getting pregnant is associated with the decrease in the share of women reporting they didn’t want to be pregnant or it happened too soon. Meanwhile, it also found more women, especially those who are 35 and up - said they were having children later than they wanted.
