While almost all insurance plans cover prescription drugs, many do not cover all of the contraceptive drugs and devices approved by the federal Food and Drug Administration (FDA). In the United States, approximately 50% of pregnancies are unintended, this is the highest rate of all industrialized nations. An Institute of Medicine Committee on Unintended Pregnancy in 1995 said that one of the reasons for the high rates of unintended pregnancies in the U.S. was private health insurance failure to cover contraceptives. Contraceptives have such a track record in preventing unintended pregnancy, reducing the need for abortion and enhancing health of women and children. Insurance companies and employee healthcare plans should cover all contraceptive drugs and devices. .
Margaret Sanger was born into a world in which doctors were not allowed to give their patients information about contraceptives. The result for many women was childbirth, miscarriage and illegal abortions. Back then the Federal Comstock law (passed in the 1873) banned contraception and abortion as forms of "obscenity". Although rich women could afford getting what they needed from Europe, poor women who mostly resorted to illegal abortions often did not survive. Sanger's interest in sex education and safe contraceptive methods led her to Europe to learn how women there prevented pregnancy. She eventually went on to write about these measures which led to her being arrested for violations of Comstock law. Sanger was finally released, and she traveled across the U.S. to promote reproductive choice. She faced resistance from the government, the Catholic Church and many physicians. A seizure of a shipment of diaphragms that Sanger had ordered from Japan, caused a court to finally rule that physicians were excused from the Comstock law. This gave doctors the right to import, prescribe and distribute contraceptives. When Margaret Sanger opened her first clinic in 1916, the infant mortality rate in New York City was 88.