I’m all linky, no thinky this morning. This first cup of weak office coffee hasn’t been quite enough to cut through the fog of this impending cold.
Guttmacher’s just some out with a new report that, once again, demonstrates the need for publicly funded family planning services. This is such common sense to me I hardly know what to say about it. Family planning clinics provide basic health care for many low-income, un- or underinsured, or rural women. They go a long way to preventing unintended pregnancy and protecting women’s health. And as this report delves into, at a time when health care costs are exploding, they save taxpayers way more than they cost.
From the press release:
By providing millions of young and low-income women access to voluntary contraceptive services, the national family planning program prevents 1.94 million unintended pregnancies, including almost 400,000 teen pregnancies, each year. These pregnancies would result in 860,000 unintended births, 810,000 abortions and 270,000 miscarriages, according to a new Guttmacher Institute report.
Absent publicly funded family planning services, the U.S. abortion rate would be nearly two-thirds higher than it currently is, and nearly twice as high among poor women.
Publicly funded family planning services are highly cost-effective. More than nine in 10 women receiving them would be eligible for Medicaid-funded prenatal, delivery and postpartum care services if they became pregnant. Avoiding the significant costs associated with these unintended births saves taxpayers $4 for every $1 spent on family planning.