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

[Eugene]

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.

[font size=1]-snip-[/font]

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

[AuntPatsy]

1. Again, surely the majority of citizens are not that lacking in common sense to keep

Voting these yahoos in?

[ladjf]

8. I know it makes no sense, but over the past few years,

Americans have consistently voted against their own best interests. They have lacked common sense. Maybe this time, they will wake up.

[sufrommich]

2. Of course they're scrapping it, it was a huge success.

Can't have facts interfering with their fiction.

[CrispyQ]

3. Evidence that it has never been about the fetus, but rather controlling women.

Fucking assholes. I hope they choke on their dinner, in front of their families, & land face first in their mashed potatoes. Evil fucks.

[sufrommich]

5. Yep. nt

[cyberswede]

4. Man, they're fucking with people's lives.

Malevolent assholes.

[djean111]

6. It has been replaced with the "Every Sperm is Sacred" opening dance number from Monty Python's

The Meaning of Life.

[jwirr]

7. Science and data get trumped by money/greed. They do not want to pay the taxes. Also they like

to see people suffer.

[progressoid]

9. Kind of hard for the GOP to use evil abortion as a rallying cry with Dems lowering abortion rates