Colorado's teen birth rate dropped 40% between 2009 and 2013, the Colorado Department of Public Health and Environment announced this week, in part due to a program that provides long-acting contraception to low-income women.
Colorado's Family Planning Initiative provided funding for 68 family clinics across the state to offer around 30,000 intrauterine devices and implants to young women at low or no cost. An IUD is a small T-shaped device that is inserted into the uterus by a doctor. They're either wrapped in copper or contain hormones, which kill sperm and make the uterine lining too thin for egg implantation. Because IUDs stay in place for five to 10 years, they're easier to comply with than taking daily birth control pills.
An anonymous donor funded the $23 million initiative, which also provided training, outreach and technical assistance to clinics statewide.
The state health department conducted a study, to be published in the fall issue of Perspectives on Sexual and Reproductive Health, to analyze the program's impact. It found that the low-cost IUDs were a significant factor in the state's overall decrease in teen births.
According to the study the number of women choosing IUD's for their contraception needs, quadrupled, and Colorado went from being ranked 29th lowest in the teen birth rate, to being ranked the 19th lowest.
What's more the 75% of the decline was attributed to the clinics offering access to the free or low cost birth control.
Wait, are we to believe that offering teenagers a safe effective means of birth control works better than simply slut shaming young girls and telling them that they are sinners for having normal biological feelings?
Hmm, now where did I get the idea that only abstinence was the right way to deal with teen sex?
Hang on, it will come to me.
Young girls and women have had unwanted pregnancies since the beginning of recorded history. Offering them safe reproductive choices is so common sense that it's beyond belief the RWNJs want to interfere in personal choices. It's particularly odious, as they claim to be for small government. Yeah, as too many have noticed government sufficiently small to stick its nose between the females and their doctors.
ReplyDeleteSounds like a great program with a great benefactor. "$23 million initiative," millions of words of thanks to this individual's generosity and sense. Not only providing reproductive health, it goes without saying this person has also covered the STD choices a woman must make with education. Never too necessary to repeat: contraception is a personal/health choice, further safety requires being knowledgeable about STDs and the preventative measures.
How on earth does someone become the poster child for abstinence when she had a planned, yes planned pregnancy at 16? Abortion was never a thought in her mind but it was used as a rallying cry for the pro life cult.
ReplyDeleteDon't be too sure the Palins have never considered, or had, abortions...the DWTS pregnancy mysteriously disappeared. And Sarah herself may have had one abortion...in fact, we know of two miscarriages, which the RW evangelist lawmakers consider to be murder. So in Georgia, she would have to prove she didn't try to induce an abortion.
DeleteAnything any Palin has to say about reproductive health is between pure drivel and a lie. Whatever they spout or espouse should have no bearing on what real women and their doctors choose.
ReplyDeleteWhile the RWNJs yowl about freedom, they sure are prepared to use their superstitions to impose their science denial to restrict the freedoms of anyone who doesn't buy their BuyBull.
Their 1st Amendment rights should stop, the very second they impinge on the full Constitutional guarantees of every person.
Just saw the amazing movie Boyhood. There is a scene where a father (charmingly) lectures his 15 year old daughter about birth control, using Bristol Palin as a cautionary tale.
ReplyDeleteBWAHAHAHAHAHA, Bristol has been a statistic at least 4 times. She only displays Tripp, her money maker.
ReplyDeleteThat was my first thought! LOL.
DeleteWhomever funded this project is to be applauded. The outcome shows that it's not money wasted, it's an investment in women's health, and it effects not only the woman, but families and society as a whole.
ReplyDeleteNoone (except Sarah Palin, of course) should be shocked nor surprised that their children are sexual beings and need education because their minds aren't developed enough to fully realize that there's nothing "glamorous" about having a baby, and that having a baby for the wrong reason (No, Bristol, having a baby won't guarantee the father will whisk you off your feet and take care of you and his child for life).
Some single teen moms don't have a support system, and a high school education, alone, barely gives one the skills to make rent, food, diapers, well baby visits, day care etc..... I'm a mother and I doubt I could have raised three kids without the support, love and sharing by my husband. There's a young lady on our block who decided to keep her child, she got her GED, rents and apartment, works he butt off while working on a college degree. She became a Dental Hygienist and is more of a role model than Bristol Palin-Palin "Will this trial daddy work?" "Mommy, I need more allowance because versace just came out with a new pontoon boat tent that matches my sheets!.
The only thing Bristol is a statistic for is mentally challenged/annex of Sarah Inc. Poor thing never quite gnawed through the umbilical chord.
+1,000,000!
DeleteTeen pregnancy has been in decline overall since 2007
ReplyDeleteThat will in time allow the welfare rates to drop too.
ReplyDeleteBut just try to reason with a rabid GOP conservative talibangelical nutjob.