Colorado claims contraceptive program caused big drop in teen birth rates

[doxydad]

A state health initiative to reduce teen birth rates by providing more than 30,000 contraceptive devices at low or no cost has led to a 40 percent drop in five years, Gov. John Hickenlooper said Thursday.

The Colorado Family Planning Initiative, funded by a private anonymous donor for five years, has provided intrauterine devices and other implants to low-income women at 68 family-planning clinics across Colorado since 2009.

The clinics are in local health departments, hospitals and private nonprofit facilities. The program also provided training and technical assistance to family planning clinics statewide.

"When families are planned and women have children when they're ready and want them ... it's really a better situation for everyone," Hickenlooper said during his state Capitol news conference.

Seven of every 10 teen pregnancies in Colorado are unintended, officials said.

http://www.denverpost.com/news/ci_26085784/colorado-teen-birth-rates-drop-state-hands-out?ok

[RKP5637]

1. Finally some are realizing, like DUH, kids have sex, they don't wait 'till 35. This sounds

like an excellent program.

[Quantess]

2. Oh shit! That's terrible!

Especially because you just KNOW those are white teens who are not having white babies. How are we gonna compete with the hispanic birth rate?

[madamesilverspurs]

3. Our university

has a big outdoor festival to welcome the students each fall. Most of our local candidates set up tables to hand out literature, and I volunteered with one of those candidates a couple of years back. We were assigned the table right next to the booth occupied by the campus health clinic. They were doing a brisk business, with huge tubs of what we thought were pieces of candy; the students would grab a handful and move on; some students brought lunch bags that they filled with the goodies.

Curious about the very popular "candy" we walked over to take a peek. Yup, those colorful wrappers contained condoms. Our candidate, who is roughly my age, looked at me and said, chuckling, "It's sure a different world than when we were in school!" But he and I agreed that these particular freebies were a good thing.