Birth Control

Birth control offers women the opportunity to prevent pregnancy, plan and space their births, or have no births at all. And yet, in the United States, half of all pregnancies remain unintended, and access to birth control is beset by inequities in education, access, and coverage.

Research indicates that women are familiar with the range of contraceptive methods available today. But the persistently high rates of unintended pregnancy, combined with common dissatisfaction and discontinuation, suggest that women's contraceptive needs continue to be unmet.

Birth Control: What Everyone Needs to Know® will offer more than a user's guide to available means of contraception: it will examine how supported family-planning infrastructure impacts society as a whole. Through reviews of policy, scientific literature, and supplemental interviews with women, it will uncover women's concerns and apprehensions about contraception, as well as the ways birth control empowers women and increases access to educational and professional opportunities. It will provide an overview the history of birth control, the risks and benefits of contraception, the role of menstruation, and the future of birth control. The goal of this book is to provide accurate, unbiased scientific information about contraception in the context of women's lived experiences and the realities of how individuals make decisions about birth control.

Beth L. Sundstrom is an associate professor of communication and public health and the director of the Women's Health Research Team (WHRT) at the College of Charleston in Charleston, South Carolina. Dr. Sundstrom is a Fulbright Scholar and leading expert on health communication, social marketing, and women's reproductive health. She is the author of Reproductive Justice and Women's Voices: Health Communication across the Lifespan (2015) along with more than 35 peer-reviewed articles published in top-tier journals, including Contraception, the Journal of Health Communication, and the Maternal and Child Health Journal, among others. Her health communication campaigns have received national recognition, including the 2014 multi-media award by the American Public Health Association.

Cara Delay, a historian with degrees from Boston College and Brandeis University, is Professor of History at the College of Charleston. She is also a faculty member on the Women's Health Research Team. Her research focuses on women's reproductive health, including the history of motherhood and childbirth. Her books include Irish Women and the Creation of Modern Catholicism, 1850-1950 (2019) and Women, Reform, and Resistance in Ireland, 1850-1950 (2015). She has written articles for Journal of Women's History, Women's History Review, Journal of Family History, Journal of British Studies, Lilith: A Feminist History Journal, Éire-Ireland, and Feminist Studies. She serves on the executive committee of the Women's History Association of Ireland (WHAI). Dr. Delay also is a regular writer for Nursing Clio, a website that interrogates the links between the past and the present, with a focus on women's reproductive history.