| **National Center    for     Health Statistics            Division of Data     Services            6525 Belcrest Road     Hyattsville, MD     20782-2003     (301)458-4636      **

 
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**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. 

These data, and other    factors relating to family formation and reproductive health, are discussed in the NCHS'*Vital and Health Statistics* Series 23, No. 19 report. Data in the report are from    Cycle 5 of the National Survey of Family Growth (NSFG), a periodic survey conducted by    NCHS. Cycle 5 of the NSFG was conducted in 1995 and collected through in-person interviews    with 10,847 women 15-44 years of age. 

**Data Highlights**: Fifty percent of    women 15-19 years of age had ever had intercourse.  About 90 percent    of women 18-19 years of age reported that they had received formal instruction on sexually    transmitted diseases, safe sex to prevent HIV, and how to say no to sex.  Condom use at    first intercourse tripled from the 1970's to the 1990's.  Eight percent of    all women said that their first intercourse was not voluntary.  Ten percent of    births between 1990 and 1995 were unwanted by the mother at the time of conception,    compared with 12 percent between 1984-88. For black women, the decrease in unwanted births    between these two periods was particularly large -- from 29 to 21 percent.  About 6.1 million    women had impaired fecundity in 1995, compared with 4.9 million in 1988. Some of this    increase is due to the aging of the baby boom generation. The percent with impaired    fecundity was 8.4 in 1988 and 10.2 in 1995.

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This page last reviewed August 02, 2000

**U.S.    DEPARTMENT OF HEALTH AND HUMAN SERVICES****Centers    for Disease Control and Prevention**    National Center for Health Statistics    Division of Data Services     Hyattsville, MD    20782-2003    (301) 458-4636
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