Marner
mitchethekidNot only that, “teen abortion rate dropped 35 percent from 2009 to 2012 in those counties served by the initiative.”
DENVER — Thursday, July 3, 2014 — Gov. John Hickenlooper announced today the teen birth rate in Colorado dropped 40 percent from 2009 through 2013, driven by a Colorado Department of Public Health and Environment initiative that helps low-income women get long-acting reversible contraceptives.
“Unintended pregnancies, especially among teenagers, carry health risks for mother and baby,” said Dr. Larry Wolk, department executive director and chief medical officer. “Our Colorado Family Planning Initiative has helped thousands of young women who weren’t ready to have children avoid pregnancy with affordable, safe and effective contraceptives.”
The Colorado Family Planning Initiative has provided more than 30,000 intrauterine devices (IUDs) or implants at low or no cost to low-income women at 68 family planning clinics across Colorado since 2009. The decline in births among young women served by these agencies accounted for three-quarters of the overall decline in the Colorado teen birth rate.
While the family planning initiative has helped thousands of young women avoid unintended pregnancy, it also has helped reduce social and economic costs to Colorado. The teen abortion rate dropped 35 percent from 2009 to 2012 in those counties served by the initiative. The infant caseload for Colorado WIC, a program that provides nutrition education and support to low-income women and their babies, fell 23 percent from 2008 to 2013. And Colorado saved millions in health care expenditures associated with teen births, $42.5 million in public funds in 2010 alone based on the latest available data.
“This initiative has saved Colorado millions of dollars,” said Gov. Hickenlooper. “But more importantly, it has helped thousands of young Colorado women continue their education, pursue their professional goals and postpone pregnancy until they are ready to start a family.”
Left is Right 
Great post Watson. Nothing we liberals didn’t already know. How long before the pro abortion crowd at bfv catch on?
How much time have you got? lol
so frustrating because that is what i was saying for such a long time. Birth control is an economic issue more than anything else. I remember listening to the freakonomic podcast couple of months ago and they were talking about there is a over 60% chance of landing in poverty if you are a teen parent. Imagine if we stopped teen pregnancies how well our economy would be doing and unexpected pregnancies. In the first year of birth you spend about 20,000 dollars on a baby. if you are in the middle class. it is very expensive but worth it. I have another one in the oven and we are already saving up for it.
Of course, when you look at all women of birthing age, the unwanted pregnancy rate goes up as the Guttmacher study has shown. Also, if you deny the study and dismiss those states’ statistics that have shown this to be true as an anomaly, then you can make any claim you want.
I wonder about that, tired. According to the Guttmacher Institute Fact Sheet published this past December:
it would appear from this data that consistent and correct use of contraception reduces unintended pregnancies. Even inconsistent or correct use reduces them.
The study even highlights this in a graph with the title in big bold letters so it’s hard to miss, declaring “Contraception Works.”
http://www.guttmacher.org/pubs/FB-Unintended-Pregnancy-US.html
Tired claims that the Guttmacher Institute believes that increased use of contraception increases the number of abortions. This would come as shocking news to GI, who steadfastly claim just the opposite, as a cursory browse of their website would show.
http://www.guttmacher.org/index.html
Tired makes this outlandish and deeply dishonest claim by cherry picking from a decade old report or theirs which sought to address some anomalies in the relationship of contraception to abortion in certain countries. The conclusion of that very report:
“Rising contraceptive use results in reduced abortion incidence in settings where fertility itself is constant.”
Not to mention the 11 year old report necessarily did not take into account the most modern and effective forms of birth control available today. Watson and I have both produced current studies that unequivocally show the correlation of free access to these forms of contraceptives to reduced unwanted pregnancies and abortions.
This is a very common tactic among the knuckle draggers on the right: cherry pick and misrepresent data from sincere scientists and researchers to promote their agenda of lies. In this case Tired goes so far as to state this group is claiming the exact opposite of what their beliefs actually are and what their careful research proves. This can easily be seen by poking around their website a bit, but here are some other recent quotes concerning this issue from the Guttmacher Institute:
“International comparisons also provide evidence that contraceptive use reduces women’s recourse to abortion. A 2005 analysis of trends in central Asia and eastern Europe, for example, found that as use of modern contraceptive methods increased rapidly in those regions during the 1990s, abortion rates declined significantly, even as fertility rates and the number of children desired also declined. A 2010 study focusing on the nation of Georgia found that the increased use of modern contraception was a significant contributor to that country’s drop in abortion rates between 1999 and 2005, explaining 54% of the decline.
Trends in unintended pregnancy rates in the United States provide further evidence of the effectiveness of contraceptive use. The proportion using contraceptives among unmarried women at risk of unintended pregnancy increased from 80% in 1982 to 86% in 2002; this increase was accompanied by a decline in unmarried women’s unintended pregnancy and abortion rates over the same period, with the abortion rate for unmarried women falling from 50 per 1,000 women in 1981 to 34 per 1,000 in 2000.10”
Well, he probably believes that the temperature on Mars is the same as on Earth, too.
Tired, you’re welcome to respond to my and Rusty’s comments.
Wait, so tired was lying as he thoughtlessly passed along talking points? But that’s so out of character for him!
It occurs to me that the cognitive dissonance the right displays on this issue must, on some level, be a very real source of psychological pain. On one hand, they’re wedded to slavishly adhering to their party line of supporting religious extremist views (in this case, the opposition to expanding the availability of birth control). On the other hand, they’re faced with the fact that such expansion would translate into fewer abortions (literally saving innocent babies lives, by their lights). Any reasonable person seriously committed to reducing the abortion rate would capitulate on the contraception side of this divide, but not these assholes. For them, when the choice comes down to supporting a popular and hugely beneficial health care initiative of Obamas or killing more fetuses, guess who loses?
Glad I don’t suffer from such delusions; it must suck.
Ama shit her bed again:
When an egg is not fertilized it passes out of the body. When an egg IS fertilized, it then implants into the lining of the uterus, where it develops into the viable human being whose creation began with that fertilization.
Yeah, except for the 80%(!) of the time when that fertilized egg does not implant for natural reasons:
“As far as the medical establishment is concerned, pregnancy doesn’t begin until implantation. (In fact, 80 percent of fertilized eggs never implant.)”
“We can be very confident that three of the four contraceptives (that Hobby Lobby denies) do not lead to abortion, even using the conservative definition of when life begins, and we can be almost (although not quite) as sure that the fourth does not, either.”
http://www.newrepublic.com/article/118547/facts-about-birth-control-and-hobby-lobby-ob-gyn
Keeping in mind these four contraceptives reduce ACTUAL abortions, it seems bizarre to fight for a fertilized egg (which naturally aborts 80% of the time) over a developing fetus, but hey, that’s religion for ya. To normal people such as myself, it’s pretty fucked up.
I believe that at this point conservatives believe that if a man leaves his semen in a female, she should have a baby, regardless of the facts.
It seems that to conservatives, the only people using contraceptives are promiscuous and unmarried. (Funny, but statistics show that a much higher percentage of married people use contraceptives than unmarried people.) I think Dan Savage may be on to something:
“When an egg is not fertilized it passes out of the body. When an egg IS fertilized, it then implants into the lining of the uterus, where it develops into the viable human being whose creation began with that fertilization.”
I had to tone down my response to her because I was flabbergasted that she would say something so phenomenally stupid. I mean, I expect that kind of thing from tired–he actually is stupid–but she’s more delusional and deranged than stupid. I think the best part was that she said it with the utmost confidence, like you’d have to be some kid of moron to not agree with her. It was a pretty amazing Dunning-Kruger moment for ol’ CSL.
PS: I bet that CSL’s defense is going to be “I didn’t SAY that all fertilized eggs implant in the lining of the uterus! Stop making straw men [by accurately quoting her]!”
BOOM! I called it! CSL’s excuse:
“OK, it is my fault. I left enough wiggle room in my comment “When an egg IS fertilized, it then implants into the lining of the uterus, where it develops into the viable human being whose creation began with that fertilization” for a weasel to weasel through, by not being specific that not every fertilized egg does this. True, many do not.”
So let’s place our bets: How is she going to square her belief that a fertilized egg is “life” with the fact that the majority of fertilized eggs do not, in fact, result in pregnancy?
It hasn’t gone unnoticed that, when confronted with the actual statements of the Guttmacher Institute, tired disappears.
yeah, I’ve noticed that too.
Over at the pro-abortion site bfv, Tired is certain he has the upper hand in the contraception/abortion debate. As evidence he presents…an imaginary conversation in his head without a single supportive citation. Well, I guess that settles that. His imagination, is surely much more convincing than the many direct quotes, links, research and studies we’ve presented to prove our side of the debate.
Perhaps we should move on. Debating with cowardly, disabled children is tedious.
Okay, I couldn’t stand it any longer. I looked up the Guttmacher study Tired keeps referring to, the one which he pulls this quote from: “In many populations, rising levels of contraceptive prevalence are not associated over time with falling levels of abortion.”
The study is here: http://www.guttmacher.org/pubs/journals/2900603.html
Only a naive reading of this paper would yield the simplistic conclusion that increased use of contraception leads to increased abortions. Even the paper itself anticipates individuals such as Tired, who come to such a conclusion, asking “And why do some observers claim that increased contraceptive use leads to higher abortion rates?”
Tired’s use of this paper is what happens when actual science is put in the hands of lay people who both have an ideologically-driven agenda to distort the results for their own purposes and are incapable of fully grasping the contents of said paper in the first place.
“Tired’s use of this paper is what happens when actual science is put in the hands of lay people who both have an ideologically-driven agenda to distort the results for their own purposes and are incapable of fully grasping the contents of said paper in the first place.”
Well, of course — tired is a liar who is too scared to actually face the truth. That’s well established. All he does is lie and run away.
What’s more interesting, though, is the general dynamic you describe, which you’ll see all over the place with conservatives. On the issue of whether or not the morning-after pill is an abortifacient, for example, you’ll find doctors, scientists, health care professionals, and other experts with in-depth, relevant knowledge and experience saying that no, it isn’t. On the other side, you’ll find anti-choice political groups saying yes, it is. Notice the discrepancy there? How many times has Fox News had a “climate debate” that consisted of an actual scientist on one side and a conservative pundit on the other? And on and on it goes on damn near every topic.
It’s all part of right wingers’ root belief that their ignorance and delusion is every bit as valid as actual knowledge and facts. They angrily insist upon this time and time again. Tired couldn’t find any actual science or research to support his position, so he had to pull some lies from a site called “abort73.com,” which is definitely not just a bunch of anti-choice loons trying to push a political position by whatever means they can think of, oh no, not at all. When they really get deep into that rabbit hole is when they start saying that pointing out they’re wrong is “liberal bias” or “not presenting both sides of the issue” or, my favorite, “trying to silence conservatives” (just like Fidel Adolph Stalin Mao!).