1.95 Million Unintended Pregnancies Prevented

Great news from the Guttmacher Institute this week – it seems that publicly funded planning clinics have a positive impact on our entire community, preventing nearly 2 million unplanned pregnancies and almost 1 million abortions each year.

Wow. Them’s big numbers.

And since we are all freaking out about the economy these days, how about a little good news? By avoiding unintended pregnancy and the associated medical costs, including prenatal, birth and postpartum care, family planning saves taxpayers $4 for every $1 spent on family planning.

Now, can you imagine the result of all family planning was publicly funded? If every woman and girl received free or very low cost birth control and other family planning services?

We’d have the same teen pregnancy rate as the Netherlands – 12 out of 1000 girls. Ours is 75 out of 1000 girls.

You can read the report yourself right here.

http://www.guttmacher.org/media/nr/2009/02/23/index.html