Contraceptive Choices for Women with Disabilities

This paper discusses contraceptive issues for women with chronic conditions and disabilities. It has been estimated that there are approximately 15 million disabled women in the reproductive age group who were reported to have inadequate options for effective contraceptives. The inadequacy was attributed to physical access barriers socioeconomic factors and educational gaps on the part of medical providers and the disabled women. Moreover women with disabilities have little opportunity to receive contraceptive information or safe sex messages since health education classes are not geared to handle issues pertaining to disability and are often excluded from these classes. Also the paper cites the advantages and disadvantages of contraceptives for women with lupus and epilepsy; contraceptives should be cautiously used among these women. On the other hand in women with rheumatoid arthritis an improvement in their disease process was observed after intake of oral contraceptives. Research on the effect of oral contraceptives on women with multiple sclerotic and spinal cord injury is still in progress.