Birth Control

With the Zika epidemic raging around them, OB-GYNs in Puerto Rico have launched a plan to offer free contraception across the island. Doctors say the island has a high unplanned pregnancy rate.

State legislatures around the U.S. are debating which birth control benefits insurers must cover. Vermont is one of several states going beyond a focus on female contraception to include vasectomies.

California law now permits pharmacists to sell many types of hormonal birth control methods without a doctor's OK. But good luck finding a drugstore that will dispense the contraceptives that way.

In the developing world, women who want to space pregnancies can't always obtain birth control. A new insertion device for an IUD, post-childbirth, is being tested with promising results.

For the fourth time in five years, the justices consider a requirement of the Affordable Care Act that most health plans provide women access to birth control without copays.

Although 84 percent of teenage boys and young men said they believed avoiding a partner's pregnancy was important, only 42 percent had heard of emergency contraception, researchers in Colorado found.

The number of U.S. women choosing long-acting, reversible birth control methods has more than quadrupled since 2002, data suggest. Use of the pill, condoms and female sterilization has dipped a bit.

Birth control and the Affordable Care Act are back on the Supreme Court's docket, in what could be called a sequel to the Hobby Lobby ruling.