Research links the Affordable Care Act’s elimination of out-of-pocket costs for contraception with fewer births, especially among low-income families.

Nearly half of pregnancies in the US are unplanned, and there’s a wide gap between the most affluent women who are likely to have access to the most reliable forms of birth control and those from lower income households.

The Affordable Care Act’s elimination of cost-sharing for birth control was associated with more consistent contraceptive use and a decrease in birth rates among all income groups, according to the research in JAMA Network Open.

But the most prominent decline was seen among people from the lowest income group, which saw a 22% drop in births from before and after the law’s implementation.

Read the full article about the benefits of free birth control by Beata Mostafavi at Futurity.