A Tale of Two Americas for Women. [PLANetWIRE.org] Over the past three decades, widespread access to modern contraceptives and safe, legal abortion has helped tens of millions of American women take control of their lives and achieve more for themselves and their families. But a Guttmacher Institute, Abortion in Women's Lives, documents a widening reproductive health gap between poor women and higher-income women.

From the 1980s to the mid-1990s, women of all income groups became more likely to use contraceptives and less likely to experience unintended pregnancies. Since 1994, unplanned pregnancy rates among poor women have increased by 29%, while rates among higher-income women have decreased by 20%.

Today, a poor woman is four times as likely to experience an unplanned pregnancy as a higher-income woman. "Behind almost every abortion in the United States is an unplanned and unwanted pregnancy. Abortion is not an isolated event in a woman's life. It is a last resort for a woman who is faced with a crisis pregnancy she did not want or plan for," says Sharon L. Camp, President and CEO of the Guttmacher Institute.

Accordingly, doing more to help women avoid unintended pregnancies would drive substantial declines in abortion. But the federal government and most state governments have not done enough to make contraceptives more easily available.

In a growing number of states, publicly supported family planning services are under attack, and public funding for contraceptive services has declined or stagnated in more than half of the states over the last decade. At the federal level, funding for family planning services for poor women has barely kept pace with inflation.

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