Throughout the past two years as executive director of the Iowa Initiative, I’ve identified three misconceptions I had about family planning and women’s reproductive health. I assume that many others  also have the same misconceptions.

1. I always thought of unintended pregnancy as a problem that affects teenagers, not college  students and adult women. I’ve applauded stories about the U.S. lowering the birth rate among teens. I didn’t know that the rate of unintended pregnancy among 18- to 30-year-old individuals has remained stubbornly high, and the costs are very expensive. The overall rate of unintended pregnancy among 18- to 30-year old women in Iowa is almost 50 percent.

Unintended pregnancy doesn’t mean that the babies born were unwanted — some of them were adopted. Most are well-loved by his or her family. But the fact remains, these children’s  mothers were not intending to conceive a child when they had sex. Many of them were not protecting themselves from unintended pregnancy, because they say they weren’t planning on having sex.

2. I had no idea there are three new safe birth control methods that are long-acting, reversible contraceptives that are almost 100 percent effective in preventing pregnancy for three to 12 years. One of them is a hormonal implant, a small rod implanted in the upper arm, which you can barely feel and is not visible. There are also two new, improved IUDs. One is hormonal, like the implant. The other, a copper version, simply repels sperm effectively. Each method has plusses and minuses, but today couples have so many more choices to fit their lifestyles and their individual healthcare concerns.

I’m of a generation for whom “the pill” was new technology. The wistful looks on the faces of women a generation older than I, who hear me speak about LARC is noteworthy. They either had no contraceptives available to them, or those that were available were unreliable.

Many young women still choose birth control pills, but they’re not protected if they don’t take them at the same time each day. The idea of a reliable method that doesn’t require remembering to carry a pill dispenser or to set a cell phone to ring when it’s time to take the pill brings peace of mind to many young adult women set on finishing an education or finding financial stability in the job market. 

3. I used to think Planned Parenthood was the only family-planning provider around. When I was first married, I purchased inexpensive birth control pills from my local Planned Parenthood in upstate New York. For the two years that Tom attended law school it was essential that I not get pregnant because my $7,000 salary was supporting the two of us and helping to pay his tuition. When I moved back to Iowa, I learned that Planned Parenthood of southeast Iowa serves a multi-county area in our corner of Iowa. I had no idea that other clinics dedicated to providing family planning services existed.

I used the name Planned Parenthood in a generic way much as I say Kleenex instead of tissue. There are three separate Planned Parenthoods in Iowa. Today, there are 14 other family planning organizations involved in Iowa Initiative research. Many of them are starting satellite clinics in even smaller places to expand access to services. I attended the opening of a satellite of Allen Women’s Health of Waterloo in Waverly, Cedar Falls and Independence. Northeast Iowa Community Action has expanded services to New Hampton, Fayette and Postville. In Des Moines, Visiting Nurse Services has expanded to under-served areas like Des Moines Area Community College, West Des Moines and the north side.

Many of these are small businesses, most of them receiving federal Title X funding to serve low-income women. Besides contraceptive counseling, they provide a range of services such as testing for cervical cancer and treating men and women for sexually transmitted diseases. People of all ages, ethnicities and economic circumstances use their services on a sliding-fee scale.

If you need a refresher course on birth control; if you want to learn where family planning clinics are located near you; if you want to visit with a counselor at a local clinic, or invite a health educator from a clinic to visit your civic organization or your school, please visit www.iowainitiative.org.

Once I shed my misconceptions I was able to have a more realistic conversation about how parents, educators, faith-based organizations and civic organizations can help women take responsibility for managing their general health, their fertility and family planning.

Christie Vilsack is executive director of The Iowa Initiative to Reduce Unintended Pregnancies. For more information, visit www.iowainitiative.org.