A new Brookings research paper concludes that access to family planning services decreases the number of unplanned pregnancies. The paper's abstract:
This brief describes a recent analysis of the impacts of state policies that expanded eligibility for Medicaid family planning services to women who do not meet regular Medicaid eligibility criteria. The results of this research show that these expanded eligibility policies had a significant impact on reducing unplanned births. The effect on birth rates was largest for women ages 18 to 24. Data on individual behavior confirms that this reduction in births was achieved through increased use of contraception among sexually-active women. The authors estimate the policy cost of preventing an unwanted birth to be around $6,800. They conclude that this is a cost-effective policy intervention relative to other policies and programs targeted at reducing teen and unwanted births.
Rather than bemoan the obviousness of the paper's conclusion I say we bemoan the idiocy of not having these policies already in place. I mean, $6.8k is a lot of dough!
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