Reproductive Health Facts

Reproductive Health > Reproductive Health Facts

Today, our reproductive health depends on—at a time when reproductive health issues affecting the human population are complicated and complex--knowledgeable figures in the fields of obstetrics, gynecology, endocrinology, pediatrics, epidemiology or statistics and related specialties (according to fda.gov), to ensure we are cared for by the agencies, organizations, and other facilities that offer optimum preventative, diagnostic, treatment, and outpatient procedural provisions, as well as information and training. As well, our reproductive health depends on us, and us getting the information we need.

Reproductive health concerns a number of different and differing health issues, including:

Family planning, contraception and treatment for infertility
Prenatal care
Treatment for cancers involving the reproductive health system such as cervical and breast cancer
Prevention and treatment of sexually transmitted infections (STI’s) such as Gonorrhea and Chlamydia
HIV/AIDS prevention, education and services
Access to safe and legal abortion
Sexuality education to enable young Latinas to become aware and take care of their reproductive health. (latinainstitute.org)

Reproductive health concerns include issues that affect all populations in one way or another, to one extreme or another. Facts and statistics, in other words, show that reproductive health issues, illnesses, and disabilities are the great equalizer.

Consider the following, for example:

Latinas account for more than 20% of the AIDS cases among women and the HIV infection rate among Latinas is 7 times higher than for white women.

With an emphasis on race implied, in the late 1900’s, 13 state legislatures proposed over 20 measures to implant poor women with Norplant. Some of these bills proposed pressuring women on welfare to use the device either by offering them a financial bonus or as a condition on their receiving benefits.

Because a myth prevails, one that believes few women with disabilities are sexually active, there is no research on safe and effective birth control for this group.

Gynecologists typically do not offer information about birth control to women with very severe, visible disabilities.

In a national study of nearly 1,000 women with and without disabilities, 30% of women with disabilities believed that their doctors had given them wrong information about birth control, compared to only 9% of women without disabilities.

And so the list (which is here only about one grain of sand on the beach of reproductive health statistics) goes on. But because we have reproductive health support, in the likes of such agencies as the Reproductive Health Institute and the Reproductive Health Drug Advisory Committee, we can hope beyond hope to turn some of these statistics around…or down.