Study: IUD use puts girls at risk for STDs

Proponents of contraception-based sex ed say school-based contraception handouts reduce STDs (also called sexually transmitted infections, or STIs), unwanted pregnancies, and abortions. Wrong in every category.

Studies in England have found a manifold increase in abortions after handing out contraceptives. And research now shows that teenage girls who use intrauterine devices (IUDs) or birth control implants are less likely to also use condoms and therefore more at risk for STDs.

The new study analyzed 2,288 sexually active high school girls and found that IUD and implant users were 60 percent less likely to use condoms.

IUD- and implant-using girls were also more likely to have had multiple sexual partners.

And yet the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) still don't get it. Riley Steiner of the CDC concluded that the study shows the need to "increase condom use."

The CDC keeps heavily pushing the IUD on young teens, along with medical groups like the American College of Obstetricians and Gynecologists (ACOG). Defying this study and others revealing the health risks of IUDs, ACOG continues to say that abortifacient IUDs and implants should be the "first-line" option for teenage girls.

Dr. Brian Clowes, director of research and education for Human Life International, said in a media statement, "The recommendation that teenage girls with IUDs use condoms to reduce the probability of STI infection represents the outdated thinking that led to the STI explosion in the first place. Since condoms fail very frequently (about seven percent of the time, according to contraceptive technology), we can look forward to an even greater resurgence of the most serious infections, including syphilis and gonorrhea."

"When will our public health officials finally come to their senses and strongly recommend the only certain cure to the STI epidemic among young girls, which is self-control and abstinence?" Dr. Clowes asked.

Over the past twenty years, studies have shown a link between an increase in contraceptive drug use and an increase in HIV infections in women.

The alarming increase in HIV infection in women (up 14 percent in one decade) worldwide has been attributed to the global promotion of steroid-based contraceptive drugs on tens of millions of third-world women, altering their immunities, cervico-vaginal responses, and protective vaginal flora, making STD infection more likely.

A peer-reviewed study by the Population Research Institute (PRI) shows that women who use Depo-Provera are significantly more susceptible to HIV infection. With heavy funding from the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation and promotion by the United Nations, Depo-Provera has become the most widely used form of birth control in Sub-Saharan Africa, where HIV rates remain high.

The PRI study found that Depo-Provera and other injectable contraceptives made women nearly fifty percent more likely to be infected with HIV.

Another study analyzed three decades' worth of data on nearly 40,000 women in sub-Saharan Africa, and confirmed the increased risk of HIV among women using injectable contraceptives.

Past studies have also shown that users of injectable birth control are at increased risk for cancers of the breasts, endometrium, and cervix; as well as herpes, memory loss, and osteoporosis.