This week, in response to a Facebook post about the repercussions of Texas’ drastic cuts to family planning funds in 2011, one commenter wrote:

“I respectfully disagree that it is the governments responsibility to provide family planning. Definitely not to fund private organizations. It is the duty of the family to educate and council girls on the consequences of sexual activities – good and not so good.”

In 2011, anti-choice Texas Lawmakers reduced their state budget for the Women’s Health Program (WHP) by nearly two-thirds, from $111 million to $37.9 million yearly, and they were not shy about their political purposes:to starve all funding for Planned Parenthood. This drastic action caused them to also lose their allotted federal funding, another $30 million yearly. Texas has the highest uninsured rate in the country, with 28.8 percent of all residents without insurance, including one quarter of all Texas women. Through public-private partnerships between state and federal governments and private health centers, the WHP had provided both basic and reproductive health care for the most vulnerable women and families in the state since 1999. Through federal block grants, the Texas WHP received approx $9 for every $1 the state spent on preventive care. By utilizing this public-private partnership, Texas women were able to receive the highest quality of care for the lowest possible cost to the state government. Without this funding model, these low-income and uninsured patients would be pushed to emergency rooms and to private physicians at full cost to the state.  Planned Parenthood is the most widely accessible and proven quality women’s health care service in the country. Prior to the 2011 cuts, Planned Parenthood clinics provided healthcare services to nearly half of the over 100,000 women enrolled in the Women’s Health Program. In many parts of Texas, Planned Parenthood served as much as 80 percent of the population.

Having rejected  federal Medicaid funds, Texas must now try and come up with around $200 million dollars over the next five years, on top of the cuts they made to the state budget.  This is already having detrimental effects on women and the state. In the past two years 56 of Texas’ 117 family planning clinics have closed, including 51 Planned Parenthood clinics– none of which provided abortions.  These clinic closings have left nearly 50,000 Texas women without access to health care. While officials are claiming the Texas Health and Human Services Commission is capable of making up the difference through existing state-approved health centers, Texas women are largely finding themselves unable to find providers that accept Medicaid. And many of those that do participate in the WHP are not currently accepting new clients. The effects on women and families to date is devastating. From 2010 to 2012 the number of unintended pregnancies has increased by over 30,000, even while rates drop nationwide. During this same time the number of new STI transmissions has also increased significantly. 

Unintended pregnancies have long-term negative effects for individuals and the government.  The additional cost to taxpayers is estimated to be as much as $273 million– approx. $110 million to the state’s general revenue budget alone, most of this due to the cost of caring for infants under Medicaid. Low-income women with unintended pregnancies are more likely to remain dependent on government programs for extended periods of time, further increasing the cost to taxpayers. The sharp rise in unintended pregnancies will also dramatically increase the number of abortions statewide. 

Finding the most cost-effective means to provide quality care and decrease the number of unintended pregnancies is a goal that both sides of the ‘choice’ debate can support. Increasing access to contraception, and providing comprehensive sex-education, that stresses abstinence, but includes factual information about prevention, is a smart place to start. While some may believe it is the purview of the family to educate their children about sex, Texas has been using federal dollars to fund proven ineffective abstinence-only-until-marriage education for decades. In fact, an analysis of abstinence only education in Texas revealed that the percentage of students who reported having engaged in sexual intercourse increased for nearly all ages. Abstinence plus comprehensive sex education programs promote healthy families, have broad support from the American public, and do not sacrifice a commitment to traditional values. And studies have shown that for every $1 million spent on such programs would save $2.5 million of tax-payers money. Increasing access to preventive care and choosing abstinence plus comprehensive sex-ed over abstinence-only is both the right thing to do for our families and our pocketbooks.

 Also on Thursday, a bipartisan group of lawmakers announced legislation that would overhaul the military justice system by taking the response to sexual assault charges out of the chain of command and to an independent judicial authority. Taking the responsibility for prosecution of felony-level cases away from the military chain of command would make it easier for victims to seek justice, and make it less likely that the victim would be reporting to their perpetrator.  Mainstream Republican and RMC ally Senator Susan Collins of Maine has been an advocate of this issue for years, and this week has taken the lead pushing new legislation. In a press conference Thursday morning she had this to say, “This epidemic of sexual abuse cannot stand. We must take these allegations seriously and, most of all, we must ensure that justice is swift and certain for the criminals who have perpetrated these crimes.” We applaud Senator Collins for being an outspoken and reliable advocate for America’s servicewomen. 

New York Times (New York, NY)
The running battle over the regulation of abortions entered a North Dakota courtroom on Wednesday, as the state’s sole abortion clinic sued to block a new law that it says could force it to shut down

The Houston Chronicle (Houston, TX)
In 2011 Texas lawmakers cut family planning funds by two-thirds – from $111 million to $37.9 million.  The overall loss of access has translated into troubling health statistics, unplanned pregnancies and STD transmissions are already up, especially among poor rural women.

ABC News (USA)
A federal judge said Wednesday that a challenge to Arkansas’ new law banning most abortions 12 weeks into a pregnancy can proceed, rejecting the state’s attempt to get the lawsuit dismissed.

Virginia-Pilot (Richmond, VA)
Democrats are targeting thousands of socially moderate Republican and independent voters with a new robocall focused on Ken Cuccinelli’s anti-choice views days before he accepts the GOP gubernatorial nomination.

Chicago Tribune (Chicago, IL)
For decades, some public schools in Illinois have taught only abstinence in sex education classes. Now a commonsense proposal one step from the governor’s desk would require that birth control information be included by schools that choose to teach about sexual activity.

News Observer (Raleigh, NC)
GOP Senators in North Carolina are pushing an anti-choice bill requiring health instructors to teach students that abortions can cause premature births in later pregnancies, even though the World Health Organization, American Academy of Pediatrics, American Public Health Association and others don’t support the science behind this claim.

Politico (Washington, DC)
Forty years after the U.S. Supreme Court’s landmark Roe v. Wade case legalized abortion, Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg said the case is not her “ideal picture” for resolving the controversial issue of abortion.

Gallup (USA)
Despite the recent controversy surrounding the PA abortion doctor on trial, Gallup finds 26% of Americans saying abortion should be legal under any circumstances and 20% saying it should be illegal in all circumstances. The majority, 52%, opt for something in between, as has been the case in nearly every Gallup measure of this question since 1975.

San Francisco Chronicle (San Francisco, CA)
A federal judge has reinstated a lawsuit filed by a Christian college challenging the contraception mandate, after it was dismissed last year when a judge agreed with the Justice Department that the school wasn’t suffering immediate harm.

Business Insider (USA)
Melinda Gates recently took the number one spot on Business Insider’s list of Women Who Are Changing The World for her efforts to promote contraception and fight high rates of unplanned pregnancy internationally.