Colorado conservatives are thus far refusing to fund a widely successful teen pregnancy prevention program.
The New York Times called Colorado's teen pregnancy prevention program a
"startling success":
Over the past six years, Colorado has conducted one of the largest experiments with long-acting birth control. If teenagers and poor women were offered free intrauterine devices and implants that prevent pregnancy for years, state officials asked, would those women choose them?
They did in a big way, and the results were startling. The birthrate among teenagers across the state plunged by 40 percent from 2009 to 2013, while their rate of abortions fell by 42 percent, according to the Colorado Department of Public Health and Environment. There was a similar decline in births for another group particularly vulnerable to unplanned pregnancies: unmarried women under 25 who have not finished high school.
“Our demographer came into my office with a chart and said, ‘Greta, look at this, we’ve never seen this before,’ ” said Greta Klingler, the family planning supervisor for the public health department. “The numbers were plummeting.”
The highly successful (and popular) program was initially funded by a $23 million grant from the Susan Thompson Buffett Foundation. Now that the initial funding is drying up, Colorado Governor John Hickenlooper and many of the state's residents want the state to pick up where the foundation left off. Gov. Hickenlooper notes the program makes fiscal sense,
saving the state a tremendous amount of money in the long term:
"What greater gift can you give to a teenaged potential mother than the opportunity to plan her family so when she has children, it's when they're wanted, when she can afford to care for them ... and to do it in such a cost-effective way in terms of government spending? It dramatically reduces government spending," he said.
But, when it comes to family planning and pregnancy prevention, Colorado Republicans would rather throw their "fiscally conservative" principles right out the window:
When seed money from the Buffett foundation ran out this summer, Hickenlooper asked for state funding to continue the program. But Republican state lawmakers like Rep. Kathleen Conti said no. Conti complains that the long-acting birth control is too expensive and sends the wrong message to teenagers who should instead be taught to refrain from sex.
"Don't get me wrong. I don't think the doctors encouraged the kids: 'Now that you've got this, feel free to have sex with everybody.' But I think it, by default, takes away one more intimidating problem."
The United States has spent $1.5 billion on
abstinence-only program since 1996 and studies have shown these programs have absolutely no impact whatsoever on teen pregnancy rates. In fact, they often encourage
even riskier sexual activity.
The funding fight isn't over in Colorado and let's hope that even Colorado conservatives can agree that funding this important program is not only the moral thing to do, it's the fiscally conservative thing to so as well.