Study: Free Birth Control Reduces Abortion Rate

 

Bam! Don't you love when a politically contested opinion you hold gets backed up by science? Science! It's the best guy to have on your debate team. Except when people don't believe in it. It's a little difficult to throw facts at somebody who doesn't believe in them. But for those who do believe in facts, here are a few to arm yourself with. A study in New Zealand recently found--shockingly enough--that making effective birth control more widely available leads to fewer abortions. Hard to believe that whole cause-and-effect thing still works so far from the equator (is New Zealand even a real place?) but there you go.

The study gave 510 women who had already had one abortion in their lifetimes free intrauterine devices. Compared to women on the pill, those who used an IUD were 64 percent less likely to come in for a repeat abortion. That's not a shabby number. IUDs are nifty little gadgets that don't require their users to remember to take a daily pill or even to swap out a monthly ring. You have them implanted and then you can forget about them for a couple of years. Unless they become dislodged, they're almost entirely effective at preventing the formation of new humans. 

So why don't more women make use of IUDs? The up-front costs are not exactly pocket change--especially over here in the states, where even regular, non-reproductive medical attention is mighty costly. Shelling out a thousand or two dollars on a device that lasts a few years may actually be more cost-effective than other methods of birth control in the long run, but most women don't exactly have that kind of cash flow. And with reproductive health centers like Planned Parenthood getting slashed all over the country, it doesn't look as though IUDs are about to get any more accessible. Funny how we cut contraceptive services in the name of economic sensibilities even though throwing more unwanted (or at least unplanned) babies into the country is probably not the wisest economic move in the world. 

While I certainly wouldn't complain if insurance companies suddenly made IUDs a lot freer, I'd be perfectly content with just an increase in their affordability. We're intent on running our healthcare like any old business, right? Why not institute a payment plan for expensive birth control? Allow women to pay over time? You know, like Best Buy will let you do on an HDTV? Right now, the high up-front costs make IUDs impossibilities for many, many women. But if the price on these effective, worry-free contraptions could be spread out a little more--say, for the same monthly price as a prescription for the pill--we might see sex get a whole lot safer. Which would mean fewer unplanned pregnancies and fewer fetuses in jeopardy. A commitment to abstinence may be 100% effective when practiced, but it's not going to do you a heck of a lot of good in cases of coercion. Same with barrier methods like condoms, which the pro-life movement loves to tout as less effective than they actually are when used. IUDs work--we've got stats that say so. They work all the time once in place. Of course, the religious right would argue that their use would only encourage heaps of extramarital sex--the same line of argument we heard on the HPV vaccine, disgustingly enough--but maybe someday along the line we'll see the abstainers and the engagers joining together for a common goal: the prevention of abortion.