My colleagues and I at the Guttmacher Institute have just released the first-ever study looking specifically at the impact of the nationwide network of family planning clinics. We found that by providing contraceptive services to approximately seven million women each year, these clinics help couples prevent 1.4 million unintended pregnancies and 600,000 abortions each year. Without these services, the annual number of unintended pregnancies and abortions in the United States—and the number of unintended pregnancies to teenagers—would be almost 50% higher than it is.

In addition to the clear benefits for individual women and their families in helping them avoid the pregnancies they do not want and plan the pregnancies they do, we found that the services provided by these clinics save $4.3 billion in public funds each year. Nationally, for every $1.00 spent to provide services in the nationwide network of publicly funded family planning clinics, $4.02 in Medicaid expenses for births are averted.

These new data add to the growing body of evidence that investing in publicly funded contraceptive services can go a long way toward helping women reduce unintended pregnancies, abortions and unplanned births, all while saving money. Investing in a prevention strategy is more important now than ever, as the number of women who need publicly funded contraceptive services has increased by more than one million since 2000.

This entry was posted on Sunday, August 3rd, 2008 at 10:20 am and is filed under Politics, Healthcare .