By Kayla Webley Adler

The IUD is the most effective contraceptive the world has ever seen. So why aren’t more women using it? One nonprofit is trying to change that.

The science is irrefutable. The intrauterine device, or IUD, an inch-long, T-shaped piece of plastic inserted in the uterus, and the implant, a matchstick-size plastic rod placed in the upper arm, are the most effective forms of birth control on the planet. The devices, collectively known as long-acting reversible contraception, or LARCs, work more than 99 percent of the time, meaning fewer than 1 in 100 women using them will get pregnant each year—a failure rate so low, it rivals sterilization. (By comparison, 9 out of 100 women taking the pill, and 18 women out of 100 using condoms, get pregnant every year.)

RICHMOND, Va. (WRIC) - Millions of dollars are being set aside in Virginia's two-year state budget for a new pilot program. It aims to increase access to a certain kind of birth control for woman who might otherwise not be able to afford it. 

They are called LARCs, or long-acting reversible contraceptives. They include devices like IUDs or implants that can last up to 12 years. 

Dr. Shanthi Ramesh is the affiliate medical director at the Virginia League of Planned Parenthood. 

"LARC methods tend to work really well for busy young women," said Ramesh. "So a lot of graduate students, working professionals, moms, maybe people who are working multiple jobs for whom taking a birth control pill or getting a shot every three months is just not an option."

By Ali Budner / 91.5 KRCC

Teen birth rates have been going down for a while now but in one mountain west state -- Colorado -- they’ve gone down more than the rest of the nation. Could it be related to the national trend of kids having less sex or an attempt to make IUDs more accessible?

A little over a decade ago, Lynn Procell was going about her business at the Health Department Family Planning Clinic in Pueblo, Colorado when she got a strange phone call. It came "out of nowhere," she says.  

She laughs as she remembers it. "At the time the program manager and I were looking at each other real suspicious like 'what do they want?' you know? We were thinking 'what is it?'"

By Donna Bryson, Contributor

The Centennial State increased efforts to provide contraceptives and offer family planning education, and progress was made in rural areas.

For years after it opened in the late 1990s, Passage Charter School in western Colorado’s Montrose County had a waiting list for the 24 spots it offered teen parents. Last year the school had only two students and closed at the end of the term.

Louis Winkler, a Montrose doctor who was a member of the Passage board, gives much of the credit to a state program that made the most effective birth control methods widely and affordably available across Colorado.

By University of Utah Health

Summary: Researchers evaluated women's contraception choices if cost is not a factor.

Contraception cannot be handled with a one-size fits all approach. Women often try several types of birth control before finding one that works best. A new study at the University of Utah Health finds that cost often limits women's access to the most effective contraceptive methods, like intrauterine devices (IUDs) and subdermal implants.

David Turok, M.D., associate professor in the Department of Obstetrics and Gynecology and colleagues at U of U Health developed the HER Salt Lake Contraceptive Initiative (HER Salt Lake) to evaluate women's contraception choices if cost is not a factor. The research findings are published in the February 22 issue of the American Journal of Public Health.

By Jennifer Brown | [email protected] | The Denver Post

State avoided spending nearly $70 million to care for babies of low-income teens, study says.

The steep drop in teen pregnancies and abortions in Colorado since 2009 is mainly due to one thing: free, low-cost access to IUDs.

Intrauterine devices — tiny, T-shaped pieces of plastic placed in ...

Birth control doesn't only prevent pregnancy.

On Friday, the Trump administration rolled back an essential Affordable Care Act regulation that required employer-provided health insurance to cover a baseline of birth control methods without a co-pay. Under the Obama-era mandate, closely held private companies (ones with a limited number of shareholders) could opt out of covering birth control if they objected for religious or moral reasons. In those cases, the Obama administration would work with the employers' insurers to still provide birth control coverage to female employees. Now any employer, closely held or not, that has a “moral objection” to the regulation will not be required to cover any contraceptives for women who work there. It will also allow health insurers to refuse to step in and cover birth control, taking that extra coverage away from female beneficiaries. This new rule is effective immediately.

By Tina Rosenberg, The New York Times

Some people worried that these shows would normalize teenage pregnancy. Instead, the shows reveal how grueling it truly is — the sleep deprivation, the losing struggle to complete high school, constant unromantic bickering with a boy who’s a kid and a father, the pull from friends who can still party with impunity.

These shows don’t persuade girls to abandon birth control. They are birth control. As one tweeter said:

Today, America’s birthrate for teenage mothers has hit a historic low — less than 40 percent of what it was at its modern peak in 1991, when it was 61.8 births per 1,000 girls 15 to 19 years old. In 2014, the rate was 24.2 per 1,000. (In the 1950s, when more women married in their teens, the rate was even higher than the 1991 figure.)

By Nora Caplan-Bricker, Slate Magazine

Delaware Governor Jack Markell wants to bring down Medicaid costs by increasing IUDs.

When Iowa and Colorado launched statewide programs in the late aughts to make long-acting reversible contraception—intrauterine devices and hormonal implants—available for free to women of reproductive age, they hoped that other states would note the many benefits and follow along. About a year after the initiatives were first covered widely in the mainstream press (due to a budget fight in Colorado over the program), it appears they have a new convert: In Tuesday’s New York Times, Delaware Governor Jack Markell pledged, “By the end of 2017, we will ensure that the nearly 200,000 women of reproductive age in our state have access to the full range of methods” of birth control, including implants and IUDs.