Half of all pregnancies in this country are unplanned, and experts worry that some sectors of the population don’t have good access to family planning services. Among them, women with disabilities. With a sizable grant from the National Institutes of Health, the University of Virginia is now looking into that as Sandy Hausman reports.
Based on census data, some experts believe as many as 11% of women in this country have a physical or mental disability. Carol is one of them. She suffers from cerebral palsy and several other neurological and cognitive problems, but that doesn’t stop her from leading a full life.
“I work on Saturday at a real job. Yay! And I get a paycheck,” she says.
She lives with a relative in Charlottesville, sings in her church choir, draws and – yes – has a boyfriend she met through a day program for disabled adults.
“He is very handsome and oh my," she says. " Every time I’m at his house we kiss and hug, but I’d like to do so much more!”
But she won’t have sex with him until the two are married, and she predicts a long engagement. During that time, she’ll continue to get routine pelvic exams to make sure her reproductive system is healthy. That is not the case for many other women with disabilities.
“Health care providers often view women with disabilities as asexual if you will.”
Jeannne Alhusen is an associate professor at the University of Virginia’s School of Nursing.
“We know that there are actually physical barriers, so women with disabilities cannot get to an appointment. We know that women with disabilities are more likely to be low income. They’re more likely to be single. They’re more likely to have insurance that many providers don’t take or to not have insurance, and so those are all barriers that preclude them from getting adequate reproductive health care.”
Now, with a grant of nearly half a million dollars from the National Institutes of Health, Alhusen is setting out to study the needs of women with disabilities. She’ll analyze existing data and do detailed interviews with about fifty disabled women who've gotten pregnant when they didn’t want to. Her findings, due in two years, could lead to creation of new guidelines for medical professionals caring for disabled women and medical educators training the next generation of doctors and nurses.