21
Jan

Reproductive health: California gets an A+ but US gets a C-

Published on January 21st, 2014

By Leon Kolankiewicz
San Jose Mercury News
January 21, 2014

The Washington, D.C.-based Population Institute recently issued a report card on the state of reproductive health and rights in all 50 states and the nation as a whole.

California got an A+ for its score of 87.2 out of a possible 100 — the highest of any state. Washington was the only other state to get an A+, while fellow West Coaster Oregon received an A. The United States as a whole earned a mediocre C-.

The Population Institute says that the C- was because America’s rate of unintended pregnancy remains stubbornly high: Almost half of all pregnancies in the U.S. are unintended.

In addition, any gains that have been made in reproductive health could be reversed if social conservatives prevail in Congress and the state legislatures. Finally, the Population Institute says that family planning clinics are being threatened by funding cuts and burdensome laws and regulations.

The 50-State Report Card states, “The status of reproductive health and rights in the U.S. is at a historic crossroads. At the federal level, the Affordable Care Act is expanding insurance coverage for reproductive health services, but at the state level political assaults on Planned Parenthood and other providers are threatening to limit access to family planning clinics.

“What happens in the next few years could dramatically affect the future status of reproductive health and rights in the U.S.”

The criteria used in grading the states (and California’s scores) included a low rate of teenage pregnancy (California 12.7 of 15 points), a low rate of unintended pregnancy (California 11.9 of 15 points), comprehensive sex education in the schools (California 7.5 of 15 points) and access to emergency contraception in the emergency room (California 5 of 5 points).

Other criteria in which California got perfect scores of 10 points each included Medicaid expansion under the Affordable Care Act; a Medicaid “waiver” expanding eligibility for family planning services; adequate state funding for family planning clinics serving low-income households, measured by dollars of assistance per woman in need; an absence of burdensome abortion restrictions; and county-level access to family planning and abortion services.

Californians should be proud of our A+, but they should not confuse achievement of relatively high levels of reproductive health and rights with the equally (or perhaps even more) important societal and environmental goal of population stabilization.

Indeed, if reproductive health and rights alone ensured population stabilization, then California would be in great shape, but this is far from the case.

Our already overburdened state will be burdened by hundreds of thousands of additional residents, newcomers and newborns alike, in 2014 alone as we approach the dubious milestone of 40 million people, and by tens of millions more in the decades that follow.

This is what will happen if we continue to take the path of least resistance and acquiesce to our current demographic trajectory. But it’s not a fait accompli. If young California women freely opted to have slightly fewer children on average, but much more importantly, if America chose lower rates of immigration, we could step off this path to perdition.

Leon Kolankiewicz is a senior writing fellow for Californians for Population Stabilization, a wildlife biologist and environmental scientist and planner. He wrote this for this newspaper.

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