What Colorado teaches us

In 2009, the investor Warren Buffett gave a private donation of $5 million to the state of Colorado to provide teens and young adults with free or low cost IUDs and other long acting reversible contraceptives (and they do not need permission from a parent or guardian).  No one knew if women and girls would go for it or what impact it would have. In fact, the program (dubbed The Colorado Family Planning Initiative), worked like gangbusters and the results were amazingly (and unsurprisingly) positive.  Over 5 years, teen pregnancy fell by 40%  and the teen abortion rate fell by 35% from 2009 to 2012. Between 2008 and 2013 the infant caseload for Colorado WIC saw a 23% drop.

This. Is. Amazing. This will change the lives of the women who received the free IUDs. The stigma surrounding birth control and abortions is a lot to bear for any woman, but teens and young adults are especially susceptible. This program allowed them to receive IUDs anonymously and without going through their parents’ insurance. Now, they have the chance to finish their education and gain independence for themselves because they are not burdened with the demands of motherhood, the limitations of pregnancy or the shame and ostracizing that often come with abortion.

This should be a national program. This should be available to every woman, in every state in this country (really it should be available to every woman on the planet but that’s another issue). This could impact everything from economic imbalance, to healthcare, to global warming. But the sad reality is, it won’t happen. In fact, the money in Colorado is running out and legislators are unwilling, to use state funds to continue this program.  A program that would not only continue to cut the abortion rate (which conservative legislators claim to want) but actually save the state money. The Colorado Department of Public Health & Environment released a study that shows every $1 invested in the program saves $5.85 in future costs. The estimated savings thus far is between $49 million and $111 million in birth-related Medicaid costs.

So why won’t they do this? There is no reason for it besides ingrained sexism and an inherent belief that no one, especially women, should have sex for pleasure or any reason besides procreation. This stems from a long unspoken desire to keep women (predominantly poor women) from gaining economic independence. They claim that the IUDs work “too well” and will encourage more girls to have sex, which is only a bad thing if you think people shouldn’t have sex (and it’s not even true).  As Amanda Marcotte writes in RH Reality Check: “At best, that suggests that [conservatives] priorities are completely screwed up, because they would literally prefer to have widespread preventable public health issues than to admit that it’s fine if people want to have sex. At worst, it suggests that they want people to suffer unnecessary problems like STIs and unintended pregnancy, to punish them for engaging in sexual activity.”

The fact is, sex isn’t inherently good or bad. It can be a pleasurable experience and we should celebrate and respect it when done between two (or more) consenting individuals. Thanks to advances in modern science we’re living in a world when we can have now sex with little to no unintended negative consequences, the problem, as always, is the bureaucratic roadblocks and backwards thinking that will continue to punish women who choose to have sex.

For more reading on this, check out:

Republicans in Colorado Vote for More Abortions

Colorado’s Teen Pregnancy Prevention Program Works, and That’s Why Conservatives Want to Kill It

Colorado offered free birth control — and teen abortions fell by 42 percent

Colorado’s Effort Against Teenage Pregnancies Is a Startling Success