According to a recent research, the most vulnerable women in South Carolina are requesting and receiving birth control in unprecedented numbers, even in areas of the state without any physicians who specialize in women’s reproductive health.
The research, which comes from New Morning, a nonprofit organization that works to make contraception accessible to all South Carolinians at no cost or for a minimal cost, is different from what has been going on in other states that implemented abortion restrictions following the overturning of Roe v. Wade in 2022.
In states with the strictest abortion laws, prescriptions for emergency contraception and birth control tablets have decreased, according to a June research.
One of the strongest laws in the nation forbids abortions before six weeks of pregnancy: South Carolina. Following the Dobbs ruling, a large number of women’s health facilities, including abortion clinics where women had frequently obtained birth control, shuttered.
As to the data published in New Morning, the number of women in South Carolina who obtained contraception through doctor’s offices and hospitals affiliated with the organization’s training program reached a record high of 88,281 between July 2023 and June 2023. This figure was an increase from 76,561 in 2022. The underprivileged and uninsured are treated by the majority of such clinics.
The group’s results will be made public on Thursday, and NBC News will be the first to report on them.
In part, New Morning’s success can be attributed to leveraging the influence of primary care physicians, who are typically not educated in delivering contraception.
Angie Olawsky, vice president of sustainability at New Morning, stated, “Historically, people have thought of OB/GYN providers as the primary source of that care when they think of contraceptive care.” Since 30% of South Carolina’s counties lack an OB/GYN, Olawsky stated, “we focus on primary care providers.” A large portion of the state is rural.
In order to address the increasing need for birth control, including intrauterine devices, or IUDs, the organization is training those doctors.
CEO of New Morning Sarah Kelley stated, “We work with a network of clinics that are based in communities across the state.” “One does not need to travel to a metropolitan area to receive high quality, patient-centered care because clinics are dispersed throughout the state.”
According to Kelley, prior to the introduction of New Morning in 2017, 95% of clinics within the group’s network did not provide any form of family planning counseling or contraceptive treatments. Nine thousand primary care physicians have been trained to offer those services since then, according to her.
Women all around the nation have had to rush to obtain birth control or look for longer-term remedies in the wake of the Dobbs ruling.
According to a report published in August by KFF, a nonprofit organization that studies health policy issues, 17% of women in their reproductive years reported that, as a result of state laws prohibiting abortion, they changed their family planning methods. These changes included starting to use birth control or obtaining emergency contraception supplies to keep on hand.
According to Megan Kavanaugh, chief of contraceptive access studies at the Guttmacher Institute, an organization that promotes access to abortion, “people are changing the methods that they are using in the aftermath of Dobbs” on a national level. “It appears that more long-term forms of contraception, like vasectomies and sterilization, are becoming more popular.”
The founder of the Inclusive Healthcare Center in Horry County, South Carolina, Beverly Miller, is a nurse practitioner who has noted a rise in women requesting longer-term birth control options like IUDs.
“More options is what patients want,” Miller stated. Primary care is offered at her New Morning network facility. Miller sees more than half of his patients without insurance.
Patients need an alternative because of the Supreme Court’s limits on abortion, the speaker stated. They are no longer free to make that decision.
