Reproductive health

Special collection

This collection examines issues related to reproductive health, including the legality of reproductive services (reproductive rights), access to those services (reproductive health), and how societal factors such as race or social status impact access to and decisions about reproductive health (reproductive justice). This includes everything from contraception and comprehensive sex education, to abortion and pre-natal and pregnancy care, as well as other issues that inform a person’s full reproductive autonomy. This special collection brings together knowledge and insights from organizations addressing reproductive health related issues and explores the impact foundations and nonprofits are having on this work.

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Roadmap for Change to Support Pregnant and Parenting Students: Putting Student-Parent Families at the Center of Recommendations for Practice, Policy, Research, and Investment

December 30, 2022

More than 5.4 million college students in the United States have children, representing nearly a quarter of undergraduate students and nearly a third of graduate students. For these students, pursuing their education goals often requires interacting with many different policy systems and supports. We have mapped 11 large policy systems that student parents concurrently navigate, including social safety net programs, early childhood education and care, and the public school system. In contrast, students who are not parenting and otherwise fit a "traditional" college profile primarily interact with one policy system, which we have termed "college access and success policies" and includes policies and practices that help students enter and persist in college.Each of these large system areas contains numerous programs, many of which we have described in detail in a framework and fact sheet series on the Student-Parent Families at the Center webpage. And few, if any, of these systems or programs are designed with parenting students in mind. The complexity of the framework emphasizes the importance of coordinating policy and practice, which allows student parents sufficient bandwidth and support to achieve their education and life goals.In collaboration with a cross-sectoral Leadership Council, we developed a roadmap of opportunities to improve practice, policy, research, and investment. We believe this expansive roadmap can provide a vision for stakeholders interested in supporting parents pursuing postsecondary pathways and their families.

Reproductive Health Care in Carceral Facilities: Identifying What We Know and Opportunities for Further Research

August 31, 2022

With increased attention on and awareness about the rights of incarcerated people, their reproductive rights and other health issues are also gaining traction in national discourse. Reproductive health care is critical for incarcerated people, especially as approximately half are parents of minor children (Ghandnoosh, Stammen, and Muhitch 2021) and 3 to 4 percent of women have been reported to be pregnant upon admission to state and federal prisons (Maruschak 2008). Furthermore, prisons have violated people's reproductive freedom and physical autonomy with inhumane practices such as forced sterilization and the restraining of pregnant people* during labor. Despite its importance, research on reproductive health care access in prisons is limited. In this brief, we provide an overview of what is known about reproductive health care in carceral settings and explore opportunities for further research.

Knowledge Gaps and Misinformation About Birth Control Methods Persist in 2016

September 14, 2016

Beyond Birth Control: Family Planning and Women's Lives is a multiyear project examining the current state of access to contraception and how this access influences women's lives in the short and long term. Supported by the William and Flora Hewlett Foundation, the Urban Institute is using mixed research methods to answer two main questions under the project: how does expanded access to affordable contraception affect short- and long-term socioeconomic and health outcomes for women and their families, and what are the persistent barriers to contraceptive access and use, who faces these barriers, and how can these barriers be reduced? This brief is one of a series of Beyond Birth Control products that will provide new and timely information to influence policy debates and highlight areas where progress has been most challenging and where additional resources could most productively be directed.