ages 25-40

    Your reproductive health

    Talking to your healthcare provider

Your reproductive health

Women can protect their fertility even before they are ready to start a family. Nutrition, a healthy lifestyle and decisions about sexual behavior influence your ability to conceive a child and have a safe delivery.

In the ideal situation…

You will be able to:

• Choose if and when you want to conceive a child
• Deliver a healthy infant

Most women don’t realize that their reproductive health system is the most fragile system in the body. You need to know how to protect your fertility.

The decisions you make can affect your ability to have children when you choose. By engaging in unprotected sex, you put yourself at risk for sexually transmitted diseases/infections (also called STDs/STIs). When STDs/STIs go untreated they can cause fertility problems, particularly in women.

What does this mean for women?

• Chlamydia is the most frequently reported bacterial sexually transmitted disease in the United States.
• An estimated 2,291,000 women ages 14-39 are infected with chlamydia. 
• Women are frequently re-infected with chlamydia if their sex partners are not treated.
• In a national survey of US physicians, fewer than one-third routinely screened patients for STDs/STIs.
• Each year, there are almost 3 million new cases of chlamydia, many of which are in adolescents and young adults.
• For every 100,000 women, 124 have gonorrhea.
• Fifteen to 20% of women will become infected with genital herpes by the time they reach adulthood
• Twenty five percent of all new HIV cases are in women
  Information from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention

What you can do to protect yourself and protect your fertility:

• Use condoms correctly and consistently every time you have sex.
• Limit the number of sexual partners you have
• Get an annual physical where you request annual chlamydia and gonorrhea screenings
• Get tested and ask your sexual partners to get tested (before you start having sex)
• Recognize when you are in an abusive relationship and know who to call.
  

Contraceptive choices

There are many options available for preventing pregnancy, each with its own set of advantages and disadvantages. If you are sexually active and don't want to get pregnant, you can explore the range of contraceptive choices available. You can download our chart of birth control method comparison chart and print out a copy to bring to your healthcare provider, so your provider can help you make the choice that's best for you. Do take note that many options to prevent pregnancy do not protect you against STDs/STIs.