Preventing unwanted pregnancies

Over 800 thousand abortions were prevented through public funding of family planning services in 2006.

I'll say that again because it bears repeating: over 800 thousand abortions were prevented through public funding of family planning services in 2006.

In addition to that, over 2 million unwanted pregnancies were also prevented. And, for every dollar spent on family planning services towards preventing pregnancies, $4 were saved in costs in taxpayers' dollars towards providing mothers and their children with Medicaid.

All this according to a recent study by the Guttmacher institute, which is a "reproductive-health think tank whose research is generally respected even by experts and activists who don't share its advocacy of abortion rights" (Associated Press).

It is disheartening, then, to see conservative lawmakers and pundits argue against publicly funding family planning clinics. These places do so much more than provide women with abortions -- they provide women with education and contraceptive devices. In fact, according to the article linked above, "Six in 10 women who use a family planning center consider it their basic source of health care."

But, according to die-hard conservatives, contraception encourages illicit behavior, only increasing the problem. Right? Not exactly. As we have seen, teenaged boys and girls continue to have sexual contact even when immersed within abstinence-only sex education classes.

It's time we take sexual education in this country more serious, and time we stop being fearful of promoting promiscuity versus preventing perhaps millions of abortions or unwanted pregnancies -- this should be an issue that unite both sides of the debate.