The Guttmacher Institute has updated its report on the need for contraceptive services at both the national and state levels in 2008. While the number of women of childbearing age has remained steady, the number of women seeking contraceptive services has risen 6 percent since 2000. That's mirrored in the rise in the number of women who need publicly funded reproductive services. A lot of it is driven by a rise in the need among women of color. Publicly funded clinics helped avoid more than 400,000 abortions and about the same number of unplanned births.
But don't let that stop the new Republican-led House from trying to repeal the health-care law, which would provide many women with much-needed health services, prevent insurance companies from charging women higher premiums and, hopefully!, enable women to get birth control without co-pays. Change.org's Women's Rights blog calls out new Speaker John Boehner's anti-choice, anti-reproductive-freedom agenda, which includes reviving abstinence-only sex-education programs and cutting funding for the kinds of health services that helped prevent all those abortions.
-- Monica Potts
