Hobby Lobby 2: Inside Republicans’ Plan to Kill America’s Most Effective Anti-Teen-Pregnancy Program
Seven years later, the program has been, by most measures, a huge success. Teen birthrates are dropping across the country, but Colorado’s has fallen faster than the nationwide average, allowing it to leapfrog 11 spots in the national rankings. Between 2010 and 2012, the state estimates, 4,300 to 9,700 births to women on the state’s Medicaid program that would have otherwise occurred did not—saving Medicaid between $49 million and $111 million. The state’s abortion rate has also cratered, falling 42 percent among women ages 15 to 19 and 18 percent among women ages 20 to 24 between 2009 and 2012.
Now the private donor—whose identity remains secret—is ending the grant. A bipartisan pair of legislators in the Democrat-controlled state House have introduced a bill to use state money to continue the program. But in the state Senate, where the GOP holds a one-vote majority, abortion politics—and the Supreme Court’s Hobby Lobby decision—may scuttle the plan.
At issue are some abortion foes’ beliefs that IUDs can cause abortions—the same belief that led to the Oklahoma-based hobby chain’s lawsuit against the Obama administration’s requirement that employers provide insurance that covers contraception or pay a fine. Most scientists say IUDs primarily work by preventing fertilization. But some IUDs can occasionally prevent a fertilized egg from implanting in a woman’s uterus. Fertilized eggs often fail to implant, even without birth control, so most doctors define abortion as the termination of an already implanted pregnancy.
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