In light of President Donald Trump's recent revival of the Mexico City policy, many women's rights advocates have taken to the streets in protest for the moral case of protecting women's reproductive rights. However, there is another case to be made here — an economic one — that actually favors federally funding family planning services.
Regardless of their income levels, all women need access to information about family planning services, not only for moral reasons, but for economic reasons as well.
People want to be financially stable before going into any large investment. You wouldn’t buy a car without knowing all the information beforehand, and you certainly wouldn’t if you couldn't meet its monthly payments.
Having children is an investment — and a much more important one than a car.
Women who want children often plan on having children based on their financial stability. If federal funding for Planned Parenthood is taken away, it not only strips women of access to relatively inexpensive health services and procedures, but it also reduces access to information about pregnancy and how to avoid or delay it until a woman is ready.
According to research published by the Guttmacher Institute, public investment in family planning services in 2010 "resulted in net government savings of $13.6 billion, or $7.09 saved for every public dollar spent."
In Arizona alone, “An investment of $1 to preventative family planning through federal programs ends up saving Arizonans $11.32 in terms of unplanned pregnancies that are then having to be paid for through medicare,” said Tayler Tucker, a communications specialist at Planned Parenthood Arizona.
Defunding these necessary programs would be economically counterproductive.
“Reproductive rights are also productive rights. When women have control of there lives they can contribute to the economy, break the glass ceiling, equalize the pay gap and much more,” said Robert Reich, former secretary of labor under the Bill Clinton administration, in a video for Inequality Media.
Despite the positive economic ramifications of federally funding family planning health services, the Title X budget, responsible for funding these programs, is continuously being cut and House Republicans have threatened to defund it entirely.
According to Tucker, education and reproductive care are not priorities for many government officials, even though studies have shown that increased access is effective.
“When politicians are talking about defunding Planned Parenthood just because they have a small interest group in their ear about one piece of safe and legal abortion services that we provide, they are forgetting about the fact that when they are doing that, it is blocking access to some of the most vulnerable people in medically underserved areas,” Tucker said.
Attacks on Planned Parenthood's funding have many negative financial ramifications for students as well. At Planned Parenthood's Arizona branch, individuals from the ages 18-39 are a major part of the people served, Tucker said.
“Birth control is not only a health care issue, it is a financial issue. Covering birth control with no co-pays means college students will not have to choose between paying for tuition and books, or paying for basic health care like birth control,” Cecile Richards, president of Planned Parenthood Federation of America said in a statement posted on the organization's website.
The Congressional Budget Office estimated in 2015 that permanently prohibiting Planned Parenthood from receiving federal funds will actually increase government spending by $130 million dollars over the following decade.
Government decisions about funding family planning programs and policies should be based on scientific and economic data rather than rhetoric.
With any new policy, ethics and economics should go hand in hand. As Tucker said, it is important to add the element of showing the faces and stories behind the numbers in order to illustrate our narrative.
According to Tucker, we are dealing with a new administration that isn't valuing or paying attention to facts, science and history — however, the answer here is clear and obvious. We need to keep these services around not only for the health and well-being of women, but also for the additional benefits of saving public dollars.
Reach the reporter at hehillst@asu.edu or follow @hollyhillsten on Twitter.
Editor’s note: The opinions presented in this column are the author’s and do not imply any endorsement from The State Press or its editors.
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