More Than 20,000 Women Rushed To Get IUDs Right After Trump Elected, Study Finds

By Carey Goldberg - WBUR
February 04, 2019

“But just how big a phenomenon was that "Trump bump" in IUD demand? A new national study based on records of more than 6 million commercially insured women calculates that in the month following the election, the daily rate of IUD and implant insertions averaged nearly 22 percent higher than the year before — totaling more than 20,000 additional women in 2016, 700 women a day.

An edited Q&A with the study's lead author, Dr. Lydia Pace of Brigham and Women's Hospital:

How would you sum up what you found?

After the election, several health organizations and the media reported an increase in women's use of IUDs, and attributed that increase to the election itself. We were interested in understanding whether that trend was real. So we did an analysis in a large insurance claims database that included privately insured women from around the country.

We found that the election was indeed associated with an increase in IUD and implant insertions above and beyond the number of insertions that we'd expect, based on seasonal and preexisting trends.”

---