Fertility, Family
Planning, and Women's Health
An abundance of information on
childbearing and women's health appears in a report released recently by the National
Center for Health Statistics. The report, "Fertility, Family Planning, and Women's
Health," includes data on topics such as contraception, sexual intercourse,
infertility, pregnancy, and wanted and unwanted births. In addition to data on teenage
sexual activity reported here earlier, the report states that the leading method of
contraception remains female sterilization (10.7 million women) closely followed by the
oral contraceptive pill (10.4 million women). The report also states that in 1995, 7.9
million women were relying on their partner to use a condom, compared with 5.1 million
women in 1988 and 3.6 million women in 1982.