MERC: What's the racial and economic disparity in reproductive healthcare? How bad is it?
SHARON CAMP: Just looking at sexually transmitted infections, gonorrhea, syphilis, chlamydia, are increasingly very concentrated in the African Americans and Latino community. The rate for those STIs are multiples of four or five times higher in those minority communities than in the non-Hispanic white population. African Americans are four times more likely to have an unintended pregnancy and about three times more likely, therefore, to have an abortion and five times more likely to have an unplanned birth. That's a very serious disparity. Although the national rate of unintended pregnancy really hasn't changed in over a decade, if you look underneath, the unintended pregnancy rate for women living in poverty has gone up almost 30 percent whereas it's gone down by about 20 percent for women who are better off. The gap that for several decades now has been closing is now widening again.
How does Oregon compare to the rest of the country?
When you look at Oregon as a whole, it's usually one of the top-ranked states in terms of family planning services. But when you start to look at certain subgroups, the picture is far less rosy. Oregon is so far ahead of a a lot of states across the country, you can take a lot of pride in that.
My estimate is that you probably have a lower rate of unintended pregnancy, you're spending more per capita on reproductive healthcare, you've got a really great Planned Parenthood with a network of clinics around the state, you've expanded medicaid eligibility for family planning so that more women in need are covered, you've got a decent sex education in the schools, you're not an abstinence-only kind of place. But you do have large populations of poor people and minority groups who are getting left out.
Why is that? Why are poor women and women of color more likely to get pregnant?
The main reason is that funding for these kind of birth control and prevention services was essentially slashed during the Bush era. In the meantime, more and more women lost health insurance and working class income didn't rise. You had a couple million more women who needed subsidized sexual and reproductive health services and no money to meet their needs. With the recession, our research shows that sixty percent of women of childbearing age say they can't afford a child right now. But a whole lot of them also can't afford birth control. They're relying on less expensive, over the counter methods that are also less effective. I'm hoping things will turn around with healthcare reform, but given predictions by the pundits about who will control the next Congress, it's hard to be optimistic.
You do research on reproductive health, but you're also a blogger for Huffington Post. I'm curious how you feel about media coverage of sexual health.
I think a lot of the media do a good job. Right now, there is a lot of junk science floating around. Its become harder for people in the media who may not have a degree in research methodology to distinguish between good science and junk science. And some of these conservative organizations and the groups that they fund have found that if they adopt the rhetoric of science and put out these junk studies as if they're real science, they can get picked up. Some of what my organization spends its time doing is taking down this junk science. I find the blogosphere and the social media generally to be a really good way to get good information around quickly.
How do Americans' take on sexual health compare to Europeans'?
In Europe, sexual and reproductive health was much more the standard of women's health care in years before it was widely recognized in the united states and there were dedicated products in the Europe for family planning. One thing I did is I started a little tiny pharamaceutical company because no one would bring Plan B to the United States. Now that product is marketed in over 100 countries and there are 20 manufacturers and has multiple products like it in the United States.
Why would no major company sell Plan B in the US?
Because a lot of people including unfortunately, medical people, thought it worked by interrupting the. In fact, it worked by preventing or delaying an egg from the ovary. But because of this idea that it worked after fertilization made it in some people's mind a form of very early abortion. The women in the health community kind of had to do this ourselves.
How do you feel about how it has taken off in the last couple years?
I think it's because women were finally let in on the secret. These emergency contraceptive regiments have been known about in the medical community since 1972. The problem is that women like me, I'm turning 67 next month, we were in our 50s before we ever knew such a thing existed. And I work in that field! Now the secret's out. There's information about it all over the web and young women, college age, all know about it. It will never be a secret again.
