Three separate surveys by Phoenix this year found that fewer than 50 percent of women 18 to 45 knew that the Affordable Care Act requires health insurance plans to provide free contraceptives to women for birth control methods approved by the Food and Drug Administration.

The percentage of women who knew contraception such as birth-control pills, diaphragms, IUDs, vaginal rings and progestin injections would be free was 44 percent in the first three months of 2013, and 45 percent in April to June—a statistically insignificant difference, McNeill noted. Each survey questioned more than 3,000 women.

But a Phoenix survey done in the third quarter of this year found that awareness “is going up significantly,” McNeill said.

In the July -September period, 48 percent of the women surveyed said they knew birth control was free from health insurance plans.