Should You Get an IUD Before Trump Takes Office?

Will he build the wall or won’t he? Is America about to become a surveillance state or a circus? Will our new leader respond to humanitarian crises with military force or deranged tweets?

As a candidate, Donald Trump gave fuzzy shrift to policy, and none of us can envision the country under his imminent leadership. In this time of uncertainty, however, one thing is for sure: Women’s health in America is under grave threat. Abortions will likely be harder to come by, and the number of American women with IUDs (or Intrauterine Devices) might rise at a staggering rate in the months before Trump is sworn into office.

Starting last night, social media filled with posts urging women to get IUDs now, before Trump becomes president and potentially strips us of our easy access to birth control. On Twitter @segstroh wrote: “Ladies, consider getting an #IUD before January. Protect yourself. #ACAwhilewecan,” while @halfrikanwchees posted: “My #iud needs replacing in 2022. I think imma do it next month.”

The Affordable Care Act (or ObamaCare) made it more inexpensive and easier for women to get the pill and other forms of birth control and required long-term private health insurance companies to provide birth control with no out-of-pocket expense. Trump has said that he plans to get to work on repealing ObamaCare on his first day in office, and with a Republican-controlled House and Senate, he will likely not be met with much resistance. He is pro-life, and has said he intends to appoint pro-life judges to the Supreme Court. As governor of Indiana, Vice President-elect Mike Pence has a record of denying women access to reproductive rights. Pence is an advocate of requiring fetal ultrasounds before abortions, and has championed defunding Planned Parenthood, a source of the pill and other forms of birth control for many American women.

A nearly surefire way to prevent becoming pregnant is to get an IUD, a T-shaped copper or plastic instrument that sits in the uterus and protects against pregnancy better than any method besides upper arm implants. (IUDs have a less than 1 percent chance of pregnancy versus the pill’s 9 percent failure rate with typical use.)

According to a 2013 poll published in the journal of the American College of Obstetricians and Gynecologists, American OB-GYNs are three times as likely to choose an IUD for themselves than any other form of birth control. They are also popular in Western Europe and China, and have been slowly growing in the U.S. as of late. Many IUDs are effective for three years. If only they lasted four.

 

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