Limited Birth Control Options In Bulloch County
By Chase Amoroso Jocelyn Frazier Kaz Thomas and Lauren Sabia
People in Bulloch County needing the full range of birth control options may find they have less access than surrounding counties.
When many people think about birth control they often think of medical procedures and hormones; however, birth control is ultimately the act of preventing pregnancy.
Methods for prevention include medications like birth control pills, behaviors like education, procedures like IUD implants and devices.
The use of contraceptives has been proven to have significant health benefits through reductions in unwanted and high-risk pregnancies, maternal and infant morbidity and mortality, unsafe abortions, medical therapy and transmission of sexually transmitted infections.
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| A pack of one month supply of birth control pills Photo courtesy of Lauren Sabia |
According to Power To Decide, a campaign that advocates for federal policies, regulations and programs that support young people's ability to access comprehensive sexual health information and services, more than 600,000 women in Georgia live in contraceptive deserts, counties in which there is no reasonable access to the full range of contraceptive methods.
Of those 600,000 women, roughly 45,000 Georgian women live in counties without a health center that offers the full range of contraceptive methods.
These access barriers put low-income individuals at risk of not being able to get the right birth control method for them. They might face additional transportation costs, child care costs, and unpaid time off work because of the long distances they need to travel to access care.
“When I first moved to Georgia in 2016, I was coming for school. I was an independent student, I was working as a server and I was on birth control, but sometimes it gave bad side effects, so I'd stop taking them,” Madison Haines, a Pooler resident, said. “I couldn’t afford to go to the doctors often, so I kept sometimes taking my pills.”
However, some people have an easier time accessing birth control.
“I’ve been on birth control since maybe eighth or ninth grade for my acne,” Addie Montroy, a Georgia Southern student said. “It was always easy for me to get it. I would just go to my primary care doctor. And throughout the years I've had different kinds and experienced different side effects with each of them. I don’t think I ever paid for them, only the co-pay. My insurance covered everything else.”
The Affordable Care Act requires that contraception be 100% covered by insurers, but that doesn't always mean women are able to access the birth control their doctor prescribed for them.
The ACA requires insurers to cover at least one form of the 18 existing birth control methods, but not all of them.
The newest contraceptives on the market are often not covered by insurers, even when they are recommended by the patient's doctor.
The law also doesn’t mention pre-assessment exams, prior authorization processes, step-up exams, and sometimes even the medical process necessary to implement the method, such as an IUD, may be covered but the insertion of the device is not.
Currently, Planned Parenthood and Savannah Medical Clinic in Savannah Georgia are the only health centers near Bulloch County that offer a full range of contraceptive methods, including abortion.
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| Addie Montroy showing her information card for her IUD Photo courtesy of Lauren Sabia |
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| Assorted Condoms, a type of male birth control Photo courtesy of Chase Amoroso |
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