Frederick S. Jaffe

Fertility control services for adolescents: access and utilization.

More than one million teenagers get pregnant each year; six in 10 pregnancies end in live births--the rest in induced or spontaneous abortions. More than one-third of the births are out of wedlock. Yet, two-thirds of teenage pregnancies and half of the births are not intended. Some two million teenagers at risk of unintended pregnancy are now using effective birth control methods; but two millions are still denied them.

Abortion need and services in the United States, 1974-1975.

More than one million legal abortions were performed in the United States last year--but one-half to three-quarters of a million women in need of abortion services were still unable to obtain them. Ninety percent of all abortions are now performed in the womans home state, but services are still highly concentrated within states--typically in one or two metropolitan centers where most services are provided by nonhospital clinics. Only one-fourth of hospitals-and fewer than one-fifth of public hospitals-provide any abortion services. Many poor, rural and teenage women who can least afford to travel to obtain legal abortions will continue to be denied access to the services they want and need.

Family planning program effects on the fertility of low-income U.S. women.

Under rigorous statistical controls it has been shown that the family planning program introduced in the U.S. in the mid-1960s was succeeding very well in reducing fertility in the subpopulation it served i.e. primarily low-income persons and persons unable for economic or other reasons to secure family planning services from private physicians. The analysis examines the effects of areal differences in family planning program enrollment in 1968-1969 on areal differences in fertility in 1969-1970 when sociodemographic factors are controlled for. The impact of the program is measured in 1969. It is concluded that independent of other factors the family planning program in 1969 had a significant negative impact on the fertility of lower socioeconomic status (SES) white and black women regardless of the criterion employed to define SES and regardless of marital status in that the rates of unwanted and mistimes pregnancy of patients who had access to organized birth control clinic programs were lower than those of comparable women who did not. To assess the potential of a fully implemented program to reduce fertility differentials between upper and lower SES groups 1969-1970 fertility rates and estimates of the 1969 program impact were used. The resulting figures provide impressive documentation that the program reduced fertility in the subpopulation it serves and thus has the potential of reducing historic socioeconomic differentials in fertility. The estimates take on greater significance when it is considered that the programs impact has undoubtedly increased over time.

Short-term benefits and costs of U.S. family planning programs 1970-1975.

Between 1969 and 1975, the U.S. family planning program helped its patients avert 1.1 million unwanted and mistimed births. These averted births resulted in short-term savings to the government for health and social welfare services of

Estimating Family Planning Program Effects on U.S. Fertility Rates.

1.1 billion, compared to a federal investment in family planning of

Funding of contraceptive research

584 million--a benefit/cost ratio of

Funding for reproductive research: the status and the needs.

1.80 for every federal dollar invested.

Observations on birth planning in China, 1977.

By linking 1968-1969 family planning enrollment statistics to 1970 Census county-level data, we test for program effects on the 1969-1970fertility ofsubgroups of women defined by age, race, marital status, two definitions of economic status, and, for whites, the racial composition of their area of residence. A multivariate model to control spurious program effects is developed for wives. The pattern of effects using multiple subgroup comparison provides a weight of evidence indicating significant reductions of marital fertility among low-SES wives served by the program, and no effects on groups not served.

Family Planning Program Effects on the Fertility of Low-Income US Women.

This paper presents data on financial support of the reproductive sciences and contraceptive development assembled in the course of a two-year review of research funding by an international group of scientists and scientific administrators. Until the mid-1960s, research in reproduction was supported primarily by university budgets, philanthropic funds, and pharmaceutical firms. This research received only an insignificant share of the government support of biomedical research which grew rapidly following World War II. Establishment in the U. S. of the National Institute of Child Health and Human Development in 1963 ushered in a decade of rapid growth of government funding for the field. Expressed in terms of constant dollars (1970 = 100), total world support from all sources reached a peak of

Abortion politics : private morality and public policy

100 million in 1972 and 1973 and declined in 1974 and 1975. Over the past decade, governments have become the major source of support for the field, as the proportion contributed by private foundations and pharmaceutical firms has declined. While the major impetus for recent support of the reproductive sciences has stemmed from concern with world population growth, and hence is part of an effort to find improved methods of fertility control, fundamental research has received nearly 60% of the funding throughout the past decade while applied contraceptive research has received about 30 %. As pharmaceutical firm expenditures have become a smaller proportion of the total funds involved in contraceptive development, they have been supplemented by missionoriented programmes in the public sector devoted to this effort.