[R]esearchers at Washington University in Saint Louis provided free contraception to thousands of local women through the CHOICE Contraceptive Project. They were given their choice of method after being informed of effectiveness rates, potential side effects and the risks and benefits of each. Of the 1,404 teens in the NEJM study spanning 2007 to 2011, 74 percent chose long-acting methods — more than 16 times the reported rate of usage for U.S. teenage women.
The results were pretty stark. Teens in the CHOICE program, when compared to the national average, were five times less likely to get pregnant or give birth, and they were about four times less likely to have an abortion.
The average annual birth rate in the CHOICE group — in which three-quarters used a long-acting contraceptive — was 19.4 per 1,000 teens, which was 36 percent lower than the CDC’s 2015 goal of 30.3 per 1,000 teens. And two-thirds of teens in the CHOICE program who chose a long-acting method were still using it after two years, much better than the rate for those using a different method (one-third).
The NEJM study also comes just months after Colorado reported a state health initiative reduced the teen birth rate by 40 percent over five years by providing IUDs and other implantable devices to low-income women. That program was funded by an anonymous donor, so it’s not the kind of thing that could be easily recreated across the country. Notably, though, the Affordable Care Act requires most health plans to provide no-cost birth control, which is at the heart of the Supreme Court’s Hobby Lobby decision and still-pending religious challenges to the law’s contraceptive coverage mandate.
Once again, it becomes necessary to state the obvious. When given contraceptive choices without cost being involved, the rate of unwanted pregnancy is greatly reduced. Want to stomp out abortion? Get rid of unwanted pregnancy. Want to reduce welfare to mothers and children? Get rid of unwanted pregnancy.
Conservatives will continue to fight birth control with their dying, collective breath, it appears. Do they think they are going to stomp out sex? Do they think abstinence based sex classes work? They don’t. Do they think that access to contraception makes their daughters and sons sexually active? No. I don’t know of a single person who has ever had sex because they had birth control. 100% of the people I have known did the opposite–they used birth control because they were having sex.
Those supposedly religious people who are falling back on Hobby Lobby should really be excoriated for promoting abortion. There is no greater hypocrisy than to deny birth control to employees and then rail against abortion. Facts are not on their side.
Go tell it to that “supposedly religious” person called the Pope.
This Pope is far more modern. Secondly, why should the Pope set policy for people in this country?
I honestly find the no birth control edict immoral according to my own religious beliefs. Why should I be expected to adhere to a belief I find immoral?
Some religious faiths, notably the Roman Catholic Church, do not want to violate their own doctrinal tenets by paying for the contraception of others. They have no power or intention to deny birth control to the rest of society. Simple as that. So, which “conservatives” are fighting to deny birth control to the general public? Beats me. Can you be more specific?
Actually, many individual priests do not impose that archaic belief on others.
There is really no biblical authority or ancient authority to suggest birth control is wrong. Tell me, what is the church rule based on?
Crickets….
Finally, if the Catholic Church wants to make a rule for its flock, that’s OK. The flock can decide whether to follow the rule. What the church doesn’t have a right to do is make up rules for those of us who aren’t part of its flock. The church especially doesn’t have the right to codify their own rules into laws for everyone.
I have not really seen a church law that says a catholic business owner is not supposed to provide specific services in the health care package. that is such a contrived crock of you know what.
Any available studies as to the adverse effects of the use of those long-term contraceptives on the future ability to conceive if and when one desires such?
I don’t think they are using anything particularly new…nothing that hasn’t been around for 30 or 40 years. I would suspect there are studies galore.
Were the teens in that CHOICE program advised of the warnings from WHO and CDC that we may soon be hit by an antibiotic resistant gonorrhea which, lacking adequate treatment, could prove to be very dangerous? One of the WHO honchos in Geneva recently said: C-O-N-D-O-M.
Probably they were advised about HIV and other STDs. The thing is, those girls would be having unprotected sex and would still be vulnerable.
No one has sex because there is available birth control. People need birth control because they are having sex.
When I was a kid, there might have been something to postponing sex because of fear of pregnancy. That only lasted so long though. The taboos against unwedded pregnancy were pretty powerful at least in my social class. I knew of girls who had gotten sent away.
Once one of the girls I went to college with gave us this big cock and bull story about losing something like 30 pounds in a matter of weeks. We all wanted her diet. Turns out, I found out she had had a baby. I guess that does it. She had been sent to her aunt and uncles to ride out her shame. Then they put her in Mary Washington. My husband and I knew the aunt and uncle. (well he wasn’t my husband at the time.)
I think the mores of that time were pretty horrible but I think some of the ones today are too. There needs to be a happy medium/.
One of the great questions of life has to be about STDs that are not treated with ordinary medicines. We all heard those back when I was in college. First of all there was supposedly a hospital ship somewhere out in the ocean, filled with servicemen who either had killer syph or killer clap who could never come home because the diseases were drug resistant.
maybe that was just the precursor to AIDS.
The Pope is the spiritual head of the entire Roman Catholic Church and all its faithful members. The Church represents Catholic doctrine which applies to all Catholics no matter where they are. Since you are an American but obviously not Roman Catholic, why would you fear having to genuflect, so to speak, to the policies of a religous body which you do not recognize as your spiritual leader? All the Church is asking here is that we exempt it from having to be part of things which violate some of their key spiritual beliefs. Is that so devastating and hard to do? I don’t see where you are being pressured or even asked to adopt their belief re contraception.
The Hobby Lobby owners are not Roman Catholic. They are Protestant fundamentalists or evangelicals — not sure which. They have their own set of spiritual beliefs based on the Holy Scriptures as their primary guide. Why so harsh here? Hobby Lobby employees have insurance which covers a whole gamut of contraceptives. The only ones which Hobby Lobby asked to drop under SCOTUS authority are the two or three which are believed to be abortifacients. The owners are strongly pro-life. Why would you want to force such people to be a financial part of something which they find abhorrent from a religious and probably personal standpoint?
The Church is not making up rules for you or anyone else who is not a member. They are just asking to be excused from partaking of a part of the ACA regs so they don’t get involved in any way in what they believe to be a sin. How they derive their own doctrine from the Holy Scriptures or “ancient authority” is their business. Far be it from me, a non-Catholic, to try to tell them how to do it.
Funny thing is that the RC Council of Bishops came out strongly for ACA in the beginning…….until they found out that the adminstration had apparently broken a promise about certain aspects of the insurance policies. Why the heck ping them on this? I can’t imagine telling the Little Sisters of the Poor, for example, that they will have to pay for contraception and abortifacients (in pursuit of fornication in many instances) or be heavly fined out of their limited donation revenues because they refuse to be part of those sins.
I know people who were just as adamant about not paying taxes to support war as Hobby Lobby was about abortion. We all pay taxes for things we find morally repugnant.
Hobby Lobby also isn’t even right about IUD’s being an abortion. That’s what really pisses me off. Its their right to be ignoramuses.
Preventing a pregnancy, having an abortion or having an unwanted child born into an unwanted home – which do the religious want? They want the child born into the unwanted situation. Why is this? It is largely because they do not look at the situation with science and logic, but instead with ‘old’ thinking. The Catholic Church refused (and still can make it hard) to baptize a child born out of wedlock. What is the cost of that child to society which can often involve welfare and hinder the mother from true earnings potential. And smearing the birth control as abortificants is just that – a smear. These BC’s are designed to prevent fertilization not abort a pregnancy. But those that are against BC will continue to smear them. There are plenty of drugs that are covered by insurance that can cause (as a side effect) a miscarriage or abortion – why aren’t they trying to refuse coverage on those? Why did SCOTUS limit the restriction to birth control? Why not blood products or certain procedures?
[…] Captain Obvious: Free Contraceptive choices reduce pregnancy (www.moonhowlings.net) – This post is exactly the sort we should consider after reading the post above. The researchers at Washington University in Saint Louis provided “free” contraception to teens. This is the Liberal Democrats’ solution to stupid and immoral behavior, a “free” government that sweeps the all the problems out of sight and out of mind. […]
Actually, the Catholic church IS making up rules for those who aren’t members. Many employees of Catholic organizations aren’t Catholic and would be denied insurance coverage for contraception if the church had its way.
The reality is that whether through insurance or purchase with money provided by a paycheck, the church would still be providing the funds for contraception, so it’s a specious argument.
Many Catholics, like me, think the church should stop spending time on silliness and try harder to move beyond the 15th century.