Colorado Republicans Kill Funding For IUDs That Prevent Unwanted Teen Pregnancies

By Stephen D. Foster Jr. | 9 May 2015
Addicting Info

Rather than support a program that reduces teen pregnancy and the abortion rate, Colorado Republicans openly refused to fund free IUDs for teen girls.

The program has been a complete success for the last five years as the teen pregnancy rate has dropped by a tremendous 40 percent. And of course, less unwanted pregnancies likely prevented abortions that conservatives claim to hate so much. But because conservatives ignorantly believe that IUDs cause abortions, which is a total lie, Republicans decided to kill a funding proposal that would have kept the program running.

So get ready to see a spike in teen pregnancy and abortions, Colorado.

Science, as always, disputes the conservative belief that IUDs cause abortions. According to WebMD:

There are two types of IUDs available in the United States. One type releases the hormone progestin, which causes the cervical mucus to become thicker so the sperm cannot reach the egg. The hormone also changes the lining of the uterus, so implantation of a fertilized egg cannot occur…The other type doesn’t use hormones. It contains copper, which is slowly released into the uterine cavity. The copper stops the sperm from making it through the vagina and uterus to reach the egg, thus preventing fertilization.

In short, the device prevents sperm and egg from ever meeting, so unless conservatives now think that individual sperms and individual eggs are persons, they should have absolutely no problem with IUDs.

The program also saves the state money, and even a Republican member of the Colorado statehouse understands this.

The Denver Post reports:

Republican state Rep. Don Coram of Montrose opposes abortion, but he agreed to co-sponsor the bill with Becker after seeing the emotional and financial toll of teen pregnancy in his community and the nation. For every dollar put into the program, he says, citing a state study, it avoids an estimated $5.85 in the state’s Medicaid program over a three-year period.

A teenage unintended pregnancy “sets them up in a cycle of poverty. Eighty percent of them will be on welfare within a year. Many will drop out of school,” he says.

To recap, the free IUD to reduce teen pregnancy among teen girls not only prevents abortion by preventing unwanted pregnancies in the first place, it saves $5.85 for every dollar spent on it. That’s a more than 5 to 1 return. So the question is why would Republicans willingly kill a program that does two things they claim to support? Unless, of course, killing the program is just another way for them to wage their war on women.

After all, Republicans see women as breeding machines and the younger they start, the better. Teen pregnancy begins a cycle of being dependent on a man or being under the state’s thumb which includes regulating what you can spend your money on and what food you can or cannot buy. And if a teen girl opts for abortion, conservatives can continue punishing her by jeering at her outside of an abortion clinic and forcing her to jump through a ridiculous set of hoops in order to get one. That could include waiting periods, forced counseling, invasive transvaginal ultrasounds, unnecessary lecturing, and then a lifetime of scorn and ridicule by hypocritical conservative Christians who don’t understand that they could have prevented that abortion if they had only supported free birth control when they had the chance to do so.

In other words, conservatives want control over women and their decisions and they are against any measure that empowers women to make their own choices, whether they be economic choices or reproductive choices. And they are perfectly willing to kill proposals that do so even if it means rejecting a bill that is fiscally responsible and reduces abortion.

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