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Tuesday, April 11th, 2017

A Family Planning Miracle in Colorado: Program Has Teen Births and Abortions Drop by Half, and It’s Heading to Other States

Author:     Valerie Tarico
Source:     Alternet
Publication Date:    
Link: A Family Planning Miracle in Colorado: Program Has Teen Births and Abortions Drop by Half, and It’s Heading to Other States
Stephan:   The anti-choice movement in the U.S. makes passionate arguments about how they want to eliminate abortions because they care so much about unborn fetuses. What they really think about those fetuses is revealed the moment they are born -- sorry kid you're on your own. If you really want to reduce abortion, of course, nothing Republicans are proposing will actually  accomplish that. But there are wellness oriented social policies that will, and here is some more good news. Colorado has taken a real look at how to reduce abortions and this is what they have devised. It will never be adopted by Red value states because these new policies are not about punishment, judgment, and misery, which is so important to Republicans. But I think other Blue states will track this closely and we will see them following the trail blazed by Colorado.

Most businesses would jump at the opportunity to invest a dollar that saves them $5.85 over the next three years and then keeps on returning savings, all the while improving service to their customers.

That’s what the state of Colorado accomplished by upgrading family planning services between 2009 and 2014, and other jurisdictions have reported even greater returns over the long run. When Delaware governor Jack Markell saw Colorado’s results, he got excited and kicked off a copycat process of retooling family planning services across his state, where over 60 percent of pregnancies were unintended. Will Oregon and Washington follow suit?

The Colorado Success Story, by the Numbers

Almost half of Colorado women who got pregnant in 2008 said that the pregnancy happened sooner than they wanted or that they hadn’t wanted to get pregnant at all. That was similar to the US average: the rate of unintended pregnancy has been stuck around 50 percent since the 1960s.

Global health experts call unintended pregnancy an epidemic because it’s so common, and the toll on physical health, mental health, and […]

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