The Naked Truth » Safe Sex Leads To Less Abortions

March 2nd, 2006

Safe Sex Leads To Less Abortions

Posted in In the News, The World, Women's Rights by n. mallory | .

A recent study suggests that safe sex leads to less unintended pregnancies which leads to less abortions. (Duh.) It also suggests that when the government reduces funding for family planning or birth control to poor women and teenagers, unintended pregnancies and therefore abortions go up. Huh.

At a time when policymakers have made reducing unintended pregnancies a national priority, 33 states have made it more difficult or more expensive for poor women and teenagers to obtain contraceptives and related medical services, according to an analysis released yesterday by the nonpartisan Guttmacher Institute.

From 1994 to 2001, many states cut funds for family planning, enacted laws restricting access to birth control and placed tight controls on sex education, said the institute…

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“The most powerful and least divisive way to decrease abortion is to reduce unintended pregnancy,” said Sarah Brown, director of the nonpartisan National Campaign to Prevent Teen Pregnancy. “If we can make progress reducing unintended pregnancy, we can make enormous progress reducing abortion.”

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“Whether you’re pro-choice or pro-life, everyone ought to agree that preventing unintended pregnancies is a good thing to do,” said Isabel Sawhill, a senior fellow at the Brookings Institution. Sawhill, whose research is cited by both conservative and liberal groups, said other factors contribute to unintended pregnancies, including miscommunication between partners, insufficient knowledge about contraceptives and an “it will never happen to me” attitude.

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Despite some gains, the United States still lags far behind most industrialized nations in reducing abortion and teenage pregnancy. In 2002, 21 in 1,000 American women age 15 to 44 had an abortion. Although that is the lowest abortion rate since 1974, the decline has stalled, prompting fears that individuals and policymakers have lost focus on the underlying problem of unintended pregnancies, said Guttmacher President Sharon L. Camp.

“Unintended pregnancy in the United States is twice as high as in most of Western Europe,” she said in an interview. “As a direct result, abortion rates are twice or three times as high as European countries. There is no reason why abortion rates need to be as high as they are.”

The problem is particularly acute for the nation’s estimated 17 million adolescent girls and low-income women, because a lack of education and money are often barriers to practicing abstinence or effective birth control.

In 2000, federal health officials set a goal of reducing unintended pregnancies by 40 percent within 10 years. States, through legislative and budgetary decisions, can be major players in that effort, Camp said. California and a few other states have leveraged federal Medicaid money to extend family-planning services to more poor women. For every dime the state puts in, the federal government pays 90 cents.

“This is really a smart move for states to make,” Camp said. Yet for every state that has invested in reproductive health care or passed laws permitting pharmacists to dispense emergency contraception without a prescription, Guttmacher found at least another state that moved in the opposite direction.

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States have an incentive for investing in reproductive services, Camp said. Every $1 spent on family planning saves $3 in health care costs related to a pregnancy. [“Unintended Pregnancy Linked to State Funding Cuts” (Washington Post)]