Provide Your Citizens With Free Birth Control & Save Millions Like Colorado Did

Colorado recently made an announcement that stunned the tax payers, “the state avoided more than $80 million in Medicaid costs” simply because they provided free birth control for teenagers and women who couldn’t afford it. What a novel idea, don’t you think?

The state of Colorado conducted a massive experiment over the last 6 years providing women free IUDs and implants that prevent pregnancy for years. With huge skepticism that women would even agree to the free birth control in the first place, the team was pleasantly surprised with their findings.

Sabrina Tavernese in the New York Times:

They did in a big way, and the results were startling. The birthrate for 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.”

Imagine how many other lives could be positively impacted by Colorado’s decision to be proactive. But more importantly, for those big wig conservatives, how much money could be saved by the larger states, considering Colorado doesn’t even make the top 20 states in population rank.