Newsflash: Contraception Prevents Unwanted Pregnancies!

A new study from the AGI provides further evidence for the obvious. Social conservatives have successfully caused many states to make irrational decisions in policies governing sexuality, with entirely predictable consequences. Particular kudos go to the Post for mentioning the class issues that so often go unmentioned when reproductive policy is discussed:

From 1994 to 2001, many states cut funds for family planning, enacted laws restricting access to birth control and placed tight controls on sex education, said the institute, a privately funded research group that focuses on sexual health and family issues.

[…]
Despite some gains, the United States still lags far behind most industrialized nations in reducing abortion and teenage pregnancy. In 2002, 21 in 1,000 American women age 15 to 44 had an abortion. Although that is the lowest abortion rate since 1974, the decline has stalled, prompting fears that individuals and policymakers have lost focus on the underlying problem of unintended pregnancies, said Guttmacher President Sharon L. Camp.

“Unintended pregnancy in the United States is twice as high as in most of Western Europe,” she said in an interview. “As a direct result, abortion rates are twice or three times as high as European countries. There is no reason why abortion rates need to be as high as they are.”

The problem is particularly acute for the nation’s estimated 17 million adolescent girls and low-income women, because a lack of education and money are often barriers to practicing abstinence or effective birth control.

Which should remind us, again, that “pro-life” policies don’t work even on their own terms. And that, pace William Saletan’s assumption that better birth control polices are something everyone can agree on, as Katha Pollitt says “although of course many abortion opponents support birth control, the organized antichoice movement hates it.” And while it is true that bad reproductive policy does not break down on a clean red state/blue state basis, it should be noted that the staunchest pro-choice states in the country–California, New York, Washington, and Oregon–rank 1st, 5th, 11th and 9th respectively. While South Dakota, so allegedly “pro-life” it just passed an unconstitutional bill to ban abortion entirely, of course ranks 44th. (It should also be noted that South Carolina’s rank near the top is less anomalous than you might expect; it was one of the minority of states that at least liberalized its abortion laws before Roe.)