Crossposted from DemocraticDiva.com
I went to the salon discussion hosted by Arizona Family Health Partnership on the Colorado birth control experiment Thursday night and I have to say it exceeded my already high expectations of it. It was no elaborate production (though it was held in a nice art gallery), simply AFHP president Brenda Thomas giving a brief introduction of Greta Klingler, who then spoke about leading the effort in Colorado from 2008 to the present to address unplanned pregnancy among young and low-income women by offering them effective forms of birth control control for free. A six year study on the program’s effectiveness determined the results were “startling” in lowering unintended pregnancy and abortion rates.
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.”