There’s good news on the reproductive health front in Colorado, but there’s still a long way to go.
That was the message Tuesday at a fundraiser for Planned Parenthood of Durango at the Secret Garden at the Rochester Hotel.
“The rate of unintended pregnancies is dropping, the rate of unintended teen pregnancies is dropping, and the rate of abortions is dropping,” said Vicki Cowart, president and CEO of Planned Parenthood of the Rocky Mountains. “Hmm, I wonder what can be causing this.”
The birthrate for unintended pregnancies for teens has dropped more than 40 percent in Colorado since 2007, when a program funded by a private donor allowed health-service agencies across the state to offer comprehensive sex education and free intrauterine devices.
The drop has happened here, too. Between 1990-92 and 2009-11, the birthrate per 1,000 teens dropped from 34.8 to 24 in La Plata County, according to a story by Colorado Public Radio.
The effort was dealt a blow in the Colorado General Assembly session this year when legislators voted down a bill that would have picked up the funding after the private donor’s grant ran out.
Comprehensive sex education and access to birth control are the key change, Cowart said. Another effective program for decreasing unintended pregnancies is the Affordable Care Act, and 60 million women now have access to birth control under the act, she said.
“Rural women, the poor, young women and women of color are still underserved, and sometimes a woman falls into more than one category,” Cowart said.
Failure to provide education and access to birth control costs our society, she added.
“We, as a nation, have a chance to catch up with the rest of the industrialized world, but there’s still a lot of work to do,” she said. “Abstinence doesn’t work, and being punitive toward women for having sex doesn’t work. At the end of the day, if we don’t help a woman avoid a pregnancy she doesn’t want, we will end up supporting her baby.”
This year is the 99th anniversary of the founding of Planned Parenthood of the Rocky Mountains.
“We have been doing this work year after year, protested or not, funded or not, friendly legislators or not,” Cowart said. “And we’ll keep doing it.”
abutler@durangoherald.com
