What Are the Benefits of Family Planning?

If you hear the term “family planning” and immediately think of birth control, you’re not alone. Family planning is most often thought of as a way to prevent unwanted pregnancies. And while access to contraception is key to family planning, our team at Reproductive Health and Wellness Center believes that the ability to have children when you’re ready is just as important.

What is Family Planning?

Family planning helps individuals and couples have children on their own timelines. For many, this does come in the form of contraception (you’re likely familiar with this term from your high school health class), preventing unwanted pregnancies, and spacing out time between births. But what happens when you want to have children? 

Family planning gives you power over your own reproduction, and that means protecting your fertility and treating infertility. This includes prevention and treatment of sexually transmitted infections (STIs), pursuing fertility treatments, and fertility preservation. 

Family Planning is Empowering

One of the biggest benefits of family planning is that it empowers you to have children when you’re ready. Historically speaking, that’s a very recent benefit, particularly for women, since oral contraceptives have only been available since 1960. 

Fertility treatments, too, are comparatively recent with the first successful IVF birth in 1978. Family planning has grown in leaps and bounds since Louise Brown, better known as the first “test tube” baby, was born in the U.K.

Today, family planning services include information on how to prevent STIs (sexually transmitted infections), sperm and egg freezing services to preserve fertility, and fertility treatments like intrauterine insemination (IUI), in vitro fertilization (IVF), and egg and sperm donation to help those overcome fertility challenges. Options like reciprocal IVF and surrogacy are available at Reproductive Health and Wellness Center to give LGBTQ+ couples choices about how to build their families.

Family Planning Increases Wealth

Having the ability to plan when to have children helps individuals, families, and even countries increase their wealth. Thanks to family planning, women can now choose to delay having children until after they’ve achieved certain educational and career milestones–goals that were once unobtainable. 

Similarly, family planning allows families as a whole to choose when, and how many, children to have. That’s important because studies have shown that both individuals and families benefit financially when they have fewer children later in life. On a larger scale, family planning helps countries increase their wealth because more citizens are able to pursue higher education and remain in the workforce.

Family Planning Helps Prevent STIs

As part of comprehensive education, family planning services help individuals and couples understand how STIs are transmitted, how to lower their risk through the use of condoms and the HPV vaccine, and treatments available for existing STIs.

Preventing STIs is important because they remain one of the leading causes of infertility worldwide. Left untreated, STIs can cause permanent damage to your reproductive tract, and many can be passed on to your baby. 

Family Planning Reduces Risk for Mothers and Children

Worldwide, pregnancy and childbirth complications are the leading cause of death for girls between the ages of 15 and 19, while women over 35 also face an increased risk of complications from pregnancy and childbirth. Family planning helps lower these risks by giving women the power to choose when to have children and provides women in high-risk groups with safer options for having children.

Children born to mothers in high-risk groups and those born to mothers who have active STI infections are at higher risk for lifelong complications or death. Family planning and testing allow women to get pregnant when they’re less likely to experience complications. Certain fertility treatments provided by Dr. Marcus Rosencrantz, like egg freezing, also help reduce the risk of child mortality by allowing women to preserve their eggs when they’re younger and less likely to have genetic mutations. And IVF with genetic screening provides the security of getting pregnant with healthy embryos. 

How RHWC Can Help You With Family Planning

Reproductive Health & Wellness Center’s fertility specialist, Dr. Marcus Rosencrantz, provides a variety of family planning fertility treatments: 

• Fertility testing to help you learn about your fertility or treat existing infertility issues
• Egg freezing so you can take control of your reproductive future
• Treating hormonal imbalances to help you get pregnant
• Treating ovulatory disorders
• Treating problems with sperm
• Options for single motherhood by choice
• IUI and IVF
• Preimplantation genetic testing
• Ovulation induction
• LGBTQ+ family building
• Surrogacy services
• Fertility financing to make fertility treatments more accessible

From providing you with the knowledge to make informed decisions about your reproductive future to helping you have children on your timeline or overcoming fertility challenges, everyone can benefit from family planning. If you’d like to learn more, contact us to set up a consultation with our fertility specialist, Dr. Marcus Rosencrantz.