**Could IUDs be banned post-Roe? Some women are replacing them early**
By Caroline Kee
July 19, 2022 - 11:38am Today

NOTE:
In recent months, a growing number of articles are being shared discussing this new question regarding IUDs.

We at IUD Awareness believe that IUD use needs to be accompanied by large amounts of honest informed consent and that if all the stories were actually shared to the general population, IUDs would most likely not be as widely considered to be a "safe" method.

That said, we also strongly believe that access to birth control is a right and should not be decided through politics.

In addition, people in our support groups commonly report problems starting with insertion of a second IUD (when the first one seemed to be fine). If a large number of people get their second IUDs inserted now, we will likely see an marked increase in requests to join our support group, just as we saw at the beginning of the Trump presidency when thousands were counseled to get their first IUDs.

“In the wake of the Supreme Court’s decision last month to overturn Roe v. Wade, the landmark case that established a constitutional right to abortion, many people are worried about how access to contraception in the future might change. In fact, some users of long-lasting birth control methods — especially intrauterine devices, one of the most effective ways to prevent pregnancy — are already worrying that by the time they need their device replaced, they could have limited access to it.”
“While overturning Roe v. Wade does not directly ban IUDs or affect birth control at all, legal experts have told TODAY it could empower states to restrict or ban access to some contraception, such as IUDs. In fact, at least 12 states already have laws that allow some health providers to refuse to provide contraception-related services for religious reasons, according to Guttmacher Institute, a research group that advocates for abortion rights: Arizona, Arkansas, Colorado, Florida, Georgia, Idaho, Illinois, Kansas, Maine, Mississippi, South Dakota and Tennessee.”
“Sarah Lake, a 25-year-old in Richmond, Virginia, shared on Twitter that she's scrambling to replace her IUD because she's worried IUDs will be banned by next year, when hers expires. In 2018, Lake got a low-hormone IUD due to her family history of blood clots, she told TODAY. “It’s what my doctor and I believe is safest for me, so (the overturning of Roe) was definitely concerning. … Once I heard the news, I called my doctor,” Lake said.
“I feel like I’m kind of a sitting duck. … I’m hoping that I can just get it replaced,” she added. She has a consultation with her doctor to discuss replacing her IUD early scheduled for August.
Anna Seiges, 38, a professor and mother of two in North Carolina, shared on Twitter that she replaced her IUD early after the Supreme Court decision on Roe. “Never in my life would I have thought Roe is going to get overturned, and so I was like, what else? Maybe IUDs could be on their way out,” Seiges, who got a new IUD in June two years before the old one expired, told TODAY.
Will IUDs be banned?
Social media posts like Seiges' and Lake's show that many people are worried they won't be able to access their preferred contraceptive method in the near future — and these fears aren't entirely misplaced, experts told TODAY.”

”Why? IUDs prevent pregnancy differently from the birth control pill, for example, which inhibits the female body from releasing an egg so that there's no egg available for the sperm to fertilize. IUDs also primarily work by preventing fertilization, but they can in theory prevent a fertilized egg from implanting in the uterus, both Mariner and Dr. Daniel Grossman, director of Advancing New Standards in Reproductive Health (ANSIRH) at University of California, San Francisco, told TODAY.
The definition of pregnancy, according to the American College of Obstetricians and Gynecologists, the nation's leading group of OB-GYNs, is implantation of a fertilized egg in the uterus, "so pregnancy doesn’t begin until implantation has successfully occurred,” Grossman said. But if a law went into effect prohibiting terminating a pregnancy from the moment of “fertilization, or so-called conception ... they could limit contraceptive methods that have any effect to prevent implantation of a fertilized egg,” Grossman said, adding that conception isn't a medically recognized term.”

”It's important to note that while an IUD can stop implantation, it's not the main way it prevents pregnancy, per Grossman: “With the copper IUD, the copper ions are potentially toxic to sperm, and with the hormonal IUD, it causes thickening of the cervical mucus to prevent the sperm from entering the uterus."
The IUD is not also not medically considered to cause abortion because it does not disrupt an ongoing pregnancy, based on the medical definition of pregnancy. "Anything that happens before implantation is, from a medical perspective, not considered an abortifacient,” Grossman said.”