海角大神

On Thursday,听right-wing extremists in the U.S. House of Representatives will vote to try to defund Planned Parenthood, one of the nation鈥檚 largest providers of women鈥檚 health care and family planning services.

Planned Parenthood is under attack and it鈥檚 up to all of us to fight back.听 Any society that respects women must respect their right to control their own bodies.听 There is a strong moral case to be made for this 鈥� but this video isn鈥檛 about that.听 This is about the economics of family planning 鈥� which are one more reason it鈥檚 important for all of us to stand up and defend Planned Parenthood.听听
Reproductive rights, family planning, and women鈥檚 health are all interrelated. All girls and women need full information and access to family planning services, including abortion鈥攔egardless of their income level鈥攕o they can determine if or when they have children.
Public investments in family planning鈥攅nabling women to plan, delay, or avoid pregnancy鈥� make economic sense, because reproductive rights are also productive rights. When women have control over their lives, they can contribute even more to the economy, better break the glass ceiling, equalize the pay gap, and much more.
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Take the state of Colorado鈥檚 highly successful听. Over the past six years, in Colorado health department has offered teenagers and low-income women free long-acting birth control that prevents pregnancy over several years. Pregnancy and abortion rates plunged鈥攂y about 40 percent among teenagers across the state from 2009 to 2013.

In 2009, half of all first births to women in the poorest areas of the state occurred before they turned 21. But by 2014, half of first births did not occur until the women had turned 24, a difference that gives young women time to finish their education and obtain better jobs.
Nationally, evidence shows that public investments in family planning result in net public savings of about $13.6 billion a year鈥攐ver $7 for every public dollar spent.
This sum doesn鈥檛 include the billions of additional dollars saved by enabling women who may not be financially able to raise a child and do not want to have a child or additional children to stay out of poverty.
Yet, over the last five years Republicans have cut 10 percent of the Title X federal budget for family planning, which also pays for critical services such as cancer screenings and HIV tests. And the Republican-controlled House Appropriations Committee has gone as far as trying to eliminate the program.
Meanwhile, many states have been cutting or eliminating family-planning funds.听 This isn鈥檛 just morally wrong; its bad economics.听
Obviously, these crass economic numbers don鈥檛 nearly express the full complexity of the national debate around abortion and family planning. And they help make the case that we all benefit when society respects women to control their bodies and plan their famili

which includes the economic argument for funding family planning and women鈥檚 health services, and why it鈥檚 critical that all of us step up right now to defend Planned Parenthood.