by Sarah Stoesz
President
Planned Parenthood Minnesota, North Dakota, South Dakota Action Fund

According to a Guttmacher Institute report from early this year, the typical American woman, who wants two children, spends about five years pregnant, postpartum or trying to become pregnant, and three decades—more than three-quarters of her reproductive life—trying to avoid pregnancy.

About half of all pregnancies in the United States each year—more than three million—are unintended. By age 45, more than half of all American women will have experienced an unintended pregnancy, and about one-third will have had an abortion.
The report goes on to point out that, “Publicly funded family planning services help women to avoid pregnancies they do not want and to plan pregnancies they do. In 2006, these services helped women avoid 1.94 million unintended pregnancies, which would likely have resulted in about 860,000 unintended births and 810,000 abortions.”

When you examine the realities of the reproductive lives of women, one thing is clear: family planning plays a central role to the health and well-being of all women and access to preventative care is crucial to ensuring we can all build healthier, brighter futures.
Family planning has been cited by the CDC as one of the ten greatest public health achievements of the 20th century, right alongside immunizations and safer, healthier foods. As medical providers, we know first hand the difference that accessible, preventative health care makes in the lives of women and families across our region.

In 2008 alone, PPMNS provided more than 300,000 units of contraception, nearly 58,000 STD tests, more than 20,000 breast cancer screenings and over 17,000 cervical cancer screenings throughout our region.

Even the staunchest fiscal conservative has good reason to embrace family planning. Study after study demonstrates that it costs less to fund contraceptive services than it does to pay for prenatal care, delivery, and infant care associated with unintended pregnancies.

In fact, every dollar invested in family planning saves Minnesota taxpayers $5.40 in Medicaid charges for pregnancy-related care. Without public investment, nearly 60% of women in need of family planning assistance are unable to easily access basic public health programs. A low-income woman is 4 times more likely to have an unintended pregnancy and more than 4 times as likely to have an abortion as her higher-income peers.

Teens are especially at risk of experiencing an unintended pregnancy. In Minnesota, 54% of Minnesota Family Investment Program (MFIP) dollars ($120 million per year) is spent on families that began with a teenager giving birth.

All women, regardless of economic status, must have the same opportunity to access health care and plan and space healthy pregnancies. Strong family planning is good health care policy, good public policy and makes good sense from both a fiscal and a social perspective. And that is a simple truth that the majority of Minnesotans can agree on.

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