Colorado contraception program was a huge success – but the GOP is scrapping it [View all]

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Source: The Guardian

Colorado contraception program was a huge success – but the GOP is scrapping it

Nadja Popovich in New York
Wednesday 6 May 2015 12.54 BST

Over the past seven years, Colorado has run an experiment to see if it could lower the rate of unintended pregnancies, cut abortions – and save the state government some money, too.

The Colorado Family Planning Initiative (CFPI) offered low-income women and teens access to low or no-cost contraceptive devices, including IUDs and implants, and trained providers in insertion and counselling techniques. Last year, researchers reported significant drops in the birth rate among teens and young adult women in participating counties. The abortion rate among 15-19 year-olds dropped by more than a third; high-risk pregnancies by a fourth.

In July the governor’s office issued a glowing press release, crediting the program with a 40% statewide drop in teen birth rates between 2009 and 2013 – and a 35% drop in abortions.

But, despite the program’s widely reported successes, last Wednesday Colorado’s Republican-controlled Senate killed a bill that would sustain and expand CFPI services.

“Unfortunately, family planning is a political issue and science and data gets trumped by ideology,” Greta Klingler, who works for the Colorado department of public health and environment, and who authored the CFPI report, told the Guardian.

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Read more: http://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2015/may/06/colorado-contraception-family-planning-republicans