prevent unintended pregnancy, and half of those 
were in need of public support for such care. 
(4) The United States also has the highest rate 
of infection with sexually transmitted diseases 
(‘‘STDs’’) of any industrialized country: in 2000 
there were approximately 18.9 million new cases of 
STDs. 
(5) Increasing access to family planning serv-
ices will improve women’s health and reduce the 
rates of unintended pregnancy, abortion, and infec-
tion with STDs. Contraceptive use saves public 
health dollars: every dollar spent on providing family 
planning services saves an estimated $3 in expendi-
tures for pregnancy-related and newborn care for 
Medicaid alone. 
(6) Contraception is basic health care that im-
proves the health of women and children by enabling 
women to plan and space births. 
(7) Women experiencing unintended pregnancy 
are at greater risks for physical abuse and women 
having closely spaced births are at greater risk of 
maternal death. 
(8) The child born from an unintended preg-
nancy is at greater risk of low birth weight, dying
in the first year of life, being abused, and not receiv-
ing sufficient resources for healthy development. 
(9) The ability to control fertility also allows 
couples to achieve economic stability by facilitating 
greater educational achievement and participation in 
the workforce. 
(10) The average American woman desires two 
children and spends five years of her life pregnant 
or trying to get pregnant and roughly 30 years try-
ing to prevent pregnancy; without contraception, a 
sexually active woman has an 85 percent chance of 
becoming pregnant within a year. 
(11) Many poor and low-income women cannot 
afford to purchase contraceptive services and sup-
plies on their own. 12.1 million or 20 percent of all 
women aged 15–24 were uninsured in 2002, and 
that proportion has increased by 10 percent since 
1999. 
(12) Public health programs like Medicaid and 
Title X, the national family planning program, pro-
vide high-quality family planning services and other 
preventive health care to underinsured or uninsured 
individuals who may otherwise lack access to health 
care.
(13) Medicaid is the single largest source of 
public funding for family planning services and HIV/ 
AIDS care in the United States. Half of all public 
dollars spent on contraceptive services and supplies 
in the United States are provided through Medicaid 
and approximately 5.5 million women of reproduc-
tive age—nearly one in ten women between the ages 
of 15 and 44—rely on Medicaid for their basic 
health care needs. 
(14) Each year, Title X services enable Ameri-
cans to prevent approximately one million unin-
tended pregnancies, and one in three women of re-
productive age who obtains testing or treatment for 
STDs does so at a Title X-funded clinic. In 2002, 
Title X-funded clinics provided three million Pap 
tests, 5.2 million STD tests, and 494,000 HIV tests. 
(15) The increasing number of uninsured, stag-
nant funding, health care inflation, new and expen-
sive contraceptive technologies, and improved but ex-
pensive screening and treatment for cervical cancer 
and STDs, have diminished the ability of Title X 
funded clinics to adequately serve all those in need. 
Taking inflation into account, funding for the Title 
X program declined 57 percent between 1980 and 
2003.
(16) While Medicaid is the largest source of 
subsidized family planning services, many States 
have had to make significant cuts in their Medicaid 
programs due to budget pressures putting many 
women at risk of losing coverage for family planning 
services. 
(17) In addition, eligibility for Medicaid in 
many States is severely restricted leaving family 
planning services financially out of reach for many 
poor women. Many States have demonstrated tre-
mendous success with Medicaid family planning 
waivers that allow them to expand access to Med-
icaid family planning services. However, the admin-
istrative burden of applying for a waiver poses a sig-
nificant barrier to States that would like to expand 
their Medicaid family planning programs. 
(18) Many private health plans still do not 
cover contraceptive services and supplies. The lack 
of contraceptive coverage in health insurance plans 
places many effective forms of contraception beyond 
the financial reach of many women. 
(19) Including contraceptive coverage in private 
health care plans saves employers money: not cov-
ering contraceptives in employee health plans costs
employers 15 to 17 percent more than providing 
such coverage. 
(20) Emergency contraception is a safe and ef-
fective way to prevent unintended pregnancy after 
unprotected sex. It is estimated that the use of 
emergency contraception could cut the number of 
unintended pregnancies in half, thereby reducing the 
need for abortion. 
(21) In 2000, 51,000 abortions were prevented 
by use of emergency contraception; increased use of 
emergency contraception accounted for up to 43 per-
cent of the total decline in abortions between 1994 
and 2000. 
(22) Access to comprehensive sex education is 
critical to reducing rates of unintended pregnancy, 
abortion, and STD infection among teens. Over 60 
percent of teens have had sex before they graduate 
from high school and nine out of ten people have sex 
before they get married. 822,000 teenagers become 
pregnant each year; 35 percent of teen girls become 
pregnant at least once before turning 20; and 78 
percent of teenage pregnancies are unintended. 
Nearly half (48 percent) of new STD cases are 
among people ages 15–24, even though these youth
make up only a quarter of the sexually active popu-
lation. 
(23) The American Medical Association, the 
American Nurses Association, the American Acad-
emy of Pediatrics, the American College of Obstetri-
cians and Gynecologists, the American Public Health 
Association, and the Society for Adolescent Medi-
cine, support responsible sexuality education that in-
cludes information about both abstinence and con-
traception. 
(24) Comprehensive sex education protects ado-
lescent health. A recent survey found that only 15 
percent of American parents believe that schools 
should just teach about abstinence. 
(25) A recent study showed that teens who took 
pledges to remain virgins until marriage were just as 
likely to contract STDs as teens who did not take 
virginity pledges and that although teens taking the 
pledges delayed sexual debut, they were less likely to 
use condoms once they were sexually active. 
(26) Teens who receive sex education that in-
cludes discussion of contraception are more likely 
than those who receive abstinence-only messages to 
delay sex and to have fewer partners and use contra-
ceptives when they do become sexually active.