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California is poised to drop its mask mandate for a vaccine-fueled summer of lust but when it comes to protection, Angelenos like Jahkara Smith won’t rely on antibodies alone.
“A lot of my friends have gotten IUDs recently,” said the 24-year-old Air Force veteran, a YouTube-icon-turned-TV star. “Even if you lose your healthcare, it’s already in there. They’re not going to come take it out.”
The humble IUD, shorthand for intrauterine device, is just one of many reasons California is expected to see almost 50,000 fewer births in 2021, the nadir of a national COVID-19 “baby bust” that has sparked political backlash and left young families and would-be parents drowning in demographic quicksand. While Californians put off pregnancy in many other ways among them prescription-free pills, self-injected hormones, and higher rates of abstinence and abortion experts say the tiny T-shaped device helped an unprecedented number ghost the stork in recent months.
Obamacare made IUDs affordable — one reason for California s COVID baby bust latimes.com - get the latest breaking news, showbiz & celebrity photos, sport news & rumours, viral videos and top stories from latimes.com Daily Mail and Mail on Sunday newspapers.
Reproductive coercion: What happens when your partner overrules your pregnancy choice?
By The Washington Post
By Eva Glicksman
Sometimes he could be abusive, but the man she lived with had always honoured her wish to use birth control. One night, though, he didn t.
The Los Angeles woman, then 22, tried to get Plan B, the morning-after pill, but was refused at the clinic because she owed money to the state medical system. And she was pregnant.
Considering abortion made her feel guilty. Her boyfriend made it worse: What kind of human being are you? he taunted.
Elizabeth Miller, director of adolescent and young adult medicine at the UPMC Children s Hospital of Pittsburgh, was the first to identify and study this form of domestic abuse she called reproductive coercion - when a man or a woman tries to overrule a partner s choice about a pregnancy.
Reproductive coercion is a distinctive type of domestic abuse that includes birth control sabotage, pregnancy coercion and controlling pregnancy outcome, experts say.