Colorado Reduced Teen Pregnancy By (GASP!) Providing Birth Control
Did you know that if you let teens use birth control, they have fewer babies? Crazy, right? Turns out that contraception does exactly what it’s supposed to do, when women have access to use it. As the rest of the country fights back and forth about contraception and abortion rights, Colorado stepped up and offered IUDs (intrauterine devices) for cheap or free to low income women in 68 clinics, via the Colorado Family Planning Initiative. As a direct result, the counties served saw a 40% decrease in teen pregnancy, and a 35% drop in teen abortion, as it quadrupled young women receiving IUDs, since 2009. You can’t really argue with results like that.
Yes, the program is being funded by the government (which is a point of contention amongst opponents of contraception access), but like other preventative programs in general, it saves more money in the long run. Since teen moms are usually ill-equipped to pay for the costs associated with having, and raising a baby, decline in teenage pregnancy leads to a reduction in government-sponsored care. The latest available data shows the state saved $42.5 million in medical costs, and new cases for The Special Supplemental Nutrition Program for Women, Infants, and Children (WIC) lowered by 23 percent between 2008 and 2013.
If having fewer babies, and costing the state less isn’t cause enough to celebrate Colorado’s initiative, consider all of the other downsides of being a teen parent. Less than half of teen moms graduate high school, and all are at higher risk for domestic abuse and depression. At least half will end up on government funded welfare programs. One in four will have another child before turning 20. And their kids? They’re at high risk for abuse or neglect, likely to go to prison or be teen parents themselves, and likely to develop a plethora of chronic health problems, before eventually entering welfare programs themselves.
We’d all like to think that our kids aren’t having sex. But even though the rate of teen sex has been declining, it’s never going to go away completely. It’s been proven repeatedly that abstinence-only sex education doesn’t work — in fact, it often has adverse effects. While having your kids watch shows like 16 and Pregnant seems to work pretty well as a scare tactic, or cautionary tale, giving them the tools to make better long-term choices is way more effective. And this way, you don’t have to watch any more MTV. Here’s hoping that more states borrow Colorado’s idea, before more kids end up like a bad reality show.
[Pic via Flickr - C. Thomas Anderson]
