Intersectionality and Intentionality: Contraceptive Use Survival Data From the Her Salt Lake Study

Kelsey Wright , University of Wisconsin-Madison

Few studies follow women over the course of starting, switching, stopping and re-starting a contraceptive method. Fewer place these contraceptive practices in larger social contexts that may interact with pregnancy intentions. In this research, I use unique data to model the cumulative survival time of respondents in each of five distinct contraceptive use states. In these models, I incorporate the following covariates: race, federal poverty level and sexual orientation as indicators of socio-structural constraints, sexual satisfaction as an indicator of sexual agency, and pregnancy intention. This research is critical to moving beyond the clinical implications of respondent’s contraceptive practices and consideration of contraception as solely a medical good. By placing this research in an intersectional framework, I begin to answer how the social space that contraceptive users occupy, both as gendered sexual beings and as members in other social categories, interact with, modify and shape their contraceptive experience over time.

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 Presented in Session 149. Contraceptive Behavior in Developed Countries