Log In


Reset Password
Opinion Editorial Cartoons Op-Ed Editorials Letters to the Editor

Fund LARCs

Ending support for long-acting, reversible contraceptives would be false economy

Thanks to a grant from a private donor, the Colorado Department of Public Health and Environment has supplied more than 30,000 young or low-income women with long-acting, reversible contraceptives – or LARCs – since 2009. It has been a wildly successful effort that clearly and demonstrably should continue.

Grant funding for the program is set to end June 30. In response, the CDPHE has asked the Legislature for $5 million to continue it. Our lawmakers should ask only if that is enough before voting to fund the effort. From almost any perspective, and across the political spectrum, funding for the LARC program makes moral, fiscal and humanitarian sense.

LARCs are typically hormonal implants or interuterine devices, more often called IUDs. They are the safest and most effective form of contraception, in part because there is nothing to remember – or forget. They are reversible and do not interfere with a woman's ability to bear children if and when she chooses.

What should be particularly appealing to legislators is that there is essentially no downside to funding the LARC program. True, there is the matter of the $5 million, but having been in place since 2009, the state's LARC program has produced ample evidence that it actually saves money.

As part of the program, the San Juan Basin Health Department has provided more than 500 LARCs. With that, the teen-birth rate in La Plata County dropped by 35 percent. Since the statewide LARC effort began, Colorado's teen-birth rate has dropped 40 percent. That alone saved the state an estimated $80 million in Medicaid costs.

The most salient fact about state sponsorship of long-acting, reversible contraceptives, however, is that cutting the number of unwanted pregnancies translates directly into fewer abortions. And with that, pro-life lawmakers have a chance to support something proved to cut the number of abortions. That their pro-choice colleagues might agree on this one should not stand in their way.

Fewer abortions, while saving taxpayers' money – taken together, that should be enough to ensure support for the program, but there is a larger humanitarian perspective as well. Reducing the number of unintended pregnancies among teens cuts the number of medically difficult births and low-weight babies. It also means more young women finishing school, fewer single mothers stuck in low-wage jobs or struggling with work and child care as well as a much-reduced burden on state and local social programs. It means better lives for more young women and, when they are ready, for their children.

It is hard to see why anyone would object to any of this. Except, of course, that almost anything that touches on women's reproductive health runs afoul of the politics of abortion.

Some critics claim IUDs work by preventing fertilized eggs from attaching to the uterine wall, which they then define as an abortion. But with that argument they might just as well oppose all birth control. And in any case, the American Congress of Obstetricians and Gynecologists clearly says, “Both types of IUDs work mainly by preventing fertilization of the egg by the sperm.”

Better to just leave abortion politics alone and focus on the good that the LARC effort has done – and should be allowed to continue doing. Save the taxpayers money, cut the number of abortions, reduce the number of teen pregnancies and make young women's lives better. If that is not all good, it is as close as the Legislature is likely to see.



Reader Comments