Access to Birth Control Lets More Girls Finish High School

[Yo_Mama_Been_Loggin]

IN 2009, COLORADO’S public health department launched an initiative that helped family planning clinics expand access to low- or no-cost contraceptives and reproductive health care. By 2016, the state’s birth rate fell 54 percent for women ages 15 to 19, and the abortion rate fell 63 percent among the same age group.

“We were shocked by the reduction of the abortion and unintended pregnancy rates, but happy it was having this effect,” says Angela Fellers LeMire, interim program manager of the Colorado Family Planning Program, which oversaw the initiative. “Everyone in the field and at the state health department felt good about the work we were doing.”

Now, a study published in May in Science Advances shows that the Colorado Family Planning Initiative (CFPI) had one more benefit: More young women graduated from high school. Researchers at the University of Colorado campuses in Boulder and Denver, in collaboration with those at the US Census Bureau, conducted the study.

Using state American Community Survey and other census data from 2009 to 2017, the authors compared graduation rates in Colorado before and after the state adopted the family planning program with those of 17 other states without such policies. The researchers estimated that the program reduced the percentage of Colorado women between the ages of 20 and 22 without a high school diploma by 14 percent. This resulted, they estimated, in an additional 3,800 women born between the years 1994 and 1996 who graduated from high school by their early twenties.

https://www.wired.com/story/access-to-birth-control-let-more-girls-graduate-high-school/

[Wounded Bear]

1. They say that like it's a good thing, or something...

oh wait, it is!



All young women should have access to her preferred type of birth control, preferably at no cost. And that's not a joke.

[CTyankee]

2. This is what anti-choicers fear the most: women having sex and not "paying" for it with an unwanted

pregnancy. The social and economic benefits are enormous. Women can graduate on time, go on to college, earn degrees and make more money at valuable careers. This is no small thing!

[Thomas Hurt]

3. The christofascists won't stand for this...

[MuseRider]

4. Not only do they need us

to kick around they want us too stupid to tell them to stop.

NOT going to happen no matter what they do.

This is good information, thanks.

[Girard442]

5. You would think that the pro-lifers would get all excited about a 63% drop in abortions for teens.

Um-hum.

[uriel1972]

6. Never about life. Ever about control...

[evolves]

7. 100%

n/t

[crickets]

8. "We were shocked by the reduction of the abortion and unintended pregnancy rates"

Honestly, what did they think access to birth control was for?

[SharonAnn]

9. I think they didn't anticipate that the decrease would be so large.

[roamer65]

10. Feminine and birth control products should all be FREE.

ZERO cost and handed out to any woman, regardless of age.

Abortion should be safe, legal and available to a woman at any time during the pregnancy.

[IronLionZion]

11. Exactly what liberals want, girls in school

the horror

[niyad]

12. Thank you for posting on this most important topic. The results of this program are not

surprising to anybody with two arcing brain cells. But we cannot have females in control of their bodies and their minds. Heaven forfend!

Would you consider cross-posting this in Women's Rights And Issues? Thanks in advance.