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Birth control: finding what fits

For anyone who wants to prevent a pregnancy, now or for years, and for the people beside them. This page passes on, by name, what the Food and Drug Administration (FDA), the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), the Office on Women’s Health and HealthCare.gov say: every method one by one with how many pregnancies to expect in a year of real use, emergency contraception and its clock, what to do after a missed pill, which methods protect against STIs, what needs a prescription, and how to get it free or at low cost. It builds the questions to ask at a visit. Take only what you need today.

A word with a dotted line under it, like this, opens its official definition, quoted from a U.S. government glossary.

This page and its wording were written with AI (Claude) for Scarlet Beast (our AI policy). No doctor, nurse, pharmacist or family planning worker has reviewed it. The facts were read on October 9, 2026 on four government websites: the Food and Drug Administration’s Birth Control page (content current as of May 10, 2024), read in English and in Spanish, the source of every method line and every “out of 100” number; the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention’s Contraception and Birth Control Methods (August 6, 2024); the Office on Women’s Health’s Birth control methods (last updated May 4, 2026) and Emergency contraception (January 6, 2023); HealthCare.gov’s Birth control benefits, in English and Spanish; and the front page of the Title X Family Planning Clinic Locator. The page says whose words it is passing on, and what is marked “ours” is our own. These sources do not always agree: the Office on Women’s Health prints older, higher numbers for some methods, and its missed-pill steps are worded differently from FDA’s; the page shows both and says so. They say “women” and “men”; we kept their words where we pass on their sentences, and the guide is for everyone, whatever your body or your partners. What we left out or did not read: every brand name, and the name, strength and amount of every medicine; most of FDA’s lists of side effects and risks (they are on its page); abortion and pregnancy options, which this guide does not cover; what each state lets a person under 18 consent to, and which states let a pharmacist prescribe; what an insurance statement shows; Medicaid rules in any state; prices; CDC’s guidance for clinicians; and the Office of Population Affairs’s contraception page (fetched, not used). We ran no search on the clinic locator and called no number. It saves nothing and loads no tracking.