Some people want to cut all state funding of family planning services. They are opposed to the Department of Social Services facilitating pregnancy prevention programs. They think birth control and educational outreach are not worthy of our tax dollars. The problem is none of that makes economic sense.

It’s no coincidence that unintended pregnancy and STD rates are highest in South Carolina’s poorest and most rural counties, where access to family planning and reproductive health services are minimal or nonexistent. According to a 2011 Guttmacher Institute report, there were 52,000 unintended pregnancies in South Carolina among women aged 15-44 in 2006. In fact, 58 percent of all pregnancies in South Carolina are unintended! At an average cost of $11,700 per birth, the public-sector spent $11 billion nationally on births as a result of unintended pregnancy. This is a problem we can’t afford to ignore.

Births to teen mothers have a particularly severe economic impact. Births to young mothers cost South Carolina taxpayers approximately $197 million annually. This cost includes, among other things:

• • $34 million for public healthcare
• • $23 million for child welfare
• • $24 million for increased rates of incarceration of children of teen mothers
• • $69 million in lost tax revenue, due to decreased earnings and spending

Between 1991 and 2008, there were approximately 151,849 teen births in our state, costing taxpayers a total of $4.1 billion.

As a community, we must acknowledge and address the fundamental issues that underlie these numbers. We can then work together to build capacity, on both local and statewide levels, to promote the healthy development of our young citizens.

Be a Voice of Reason: Sign the Bill of Rights

Less than 2 percent of teen mothers earn a college degree*.

These are young women who face a future filled with hardship and uncertainty. More than half of all mothers on welfare had their first child as a teenager, and statistics tell us that children of teen mothers are two times more likely to suffer abuse and neglect compared to children of older mothers. What’s more, about one-fourth of teen mothers have a second child within 24 months of the first birth.

These sobering statistics will not change until we provide young people with science-based, developmentally appropriate education about puberty and sexual development, as well as  information about birth control so that they can make well-informed, responsible decisions.

Here are the facts in South Carolina:

• Three in 10 young women will get pregnant before age 20, and rates are rising.
• Nearly half of all new sexually transmitted infection cases are among people ages 15-24.
• One in 5 new HIV/AIDs cases is among people age 25 and younger.

We can change the statistics. Send an email today to your lawmakers letting them know you want them to support policies that research has shown will —

• Prevent unintended pregnancy among teens and young women
• Stop the spread of STIs, including HIV/AIDS, among our young people

A chorus is a powerful voice. Thank you for doing your part to provide our state’s young people with age-appropriate, comprehensive reproductive health education.

*Before age 30

What is the cost benefit of teen pregnancy prevention to taxpayers? The answer is simple, taxpayers save $17 for every $1 invested in family planning. Still, family planning funding is continuously cut only to bolster the disparity of reproductive health resources offered to young people. 

When thinking about one of the most needed items from the reproductive grocery list that family planning clinics can offer, taxpayers save a whopping $170-$850 for every $10-$50 invested to provide one young woman with Emergency Contraception. Taxpayers are able to keep more of their hard earned cash, and young women are able to exercise their rights to use birth control.

The advantage to both taxpayers and young women is apparent. And yet, South Carolina has not updated our healthy policies since 1988! It is our responsibility as citizens to make sure that our young people are getting what they need to make informed decisions in order to protect themselves. By advocating for age appropriate reproductive health education in schools, and creating a voice in every community about preventing teen pregnancy, we could save South Carolina tax payers millions of dollars. Not to mention, every community as a whole would see great economic improvement given that teen pregnancy is directly related to poverty.

The amount of money spent by tax payers because of teen pregnancy is startling, but not nearly as astonishing as how much this effects our youth today. Tell your legislators that you have had enough of rationing essential contraceptives to young women, and enough damage to our economic development as a state. Create a voice for your community and tell them you have had enough!

Why is this? In the event of an unintended pregnancy—particularly among teens and low income or uninsured women—care for both the child and the mother may be publicly funded for years. Healthcare costs are often significant, starting with neonatal intensive care; one-third of these young women do not see a healthcare provider during the critical first trimester of pregnancy, so the odds of a baby born with complications is greatly increased. Long-term costs also include pediatric care, assistance with food, and childcare.

In South Carolina alone, teen childbearing costs taxpayers $156 million per year. So the next time you hear a policymaker talking about budget deficits, remember what our state could be saving if we faced the facts and prevented more unintended pregnancies: $156 million every year.

And the benefits of investing in family planning and birth control extend far beyond tax dollars and cents. The Alan Guttmacher Institute² reports women who receive contraceptive services experience:

• Greater self-esteem and efficacy
• More decision-making power
• More time with children
• Greater educational and employment opportunities
• Improved social status
• Greater financial security
• Higher productivity and income

Families experience:

• Increased ability of women to care for families
• Stronger, more stable marital relationships
• Promotion of joint household decision-making
• Less discrimination against female children
• More attention and parental care for each child
• Increased household income
• Higher health, nutrition and education expenditures per child
• Fewer orphaned children
• Improved living conditions through less crowding

Society experiences:

• Higher productivity and better incomes
• Less societal burden to care for neglected children
• Decreased inequality between men and women
• Rapid economic growth during the “demographic window”
• Higher savings and investment
• Improved productivity
• Reduced public expenditures in education, health care and other social services

Over the last few years, 30 DHEC family planning clinics have been closed; others are not staffed sufficiently to meet the demand. It is my hope that when lawmakers consider further cuts to publicly funded reproductive health services for our most vulnerable citizens, they hear a resounding “NO” from the women of South Carolina—and a resounding “YES” on behalf of our girls, young women and families.

Let your voice be heard. Join the Tell Them e-advocacy network and send an email to your representatives today.

Wednesday night, Safe Passages, a local agency that offered emergency services for victims of domestic violence and abuse in Chester, Lancaster and York Counties, closed its doors. York county residents spend over $5.4 million each year on teen childbearing-related costs- money that could be spent funding programs domestic violence and emergency shelters (Chester and Lancaster counties each spends over $2 million).

The astronomical dollar amount that we spend on the consequences of teen child-bearing may be one reason to rethink our state strategy, but moreover, it is a much larger problem. We have been dealing with the end result and not looking at the source of the problem. By funding preventive methods of teen pregnancy and STI transmissions, we could save this state millions of dollars, and use that money to fund other needy causes.

Click here to read more about the Safe Passages closing

Safe Passages may be the latest causality in the fight to protect South Carolina’s health. But it will not be the last if we don’t come together and make a statement. Tell your legislators that you have had enough closing of essential services, enough of the health care workers being put out of work, and enough of the women and children who now have no place to go for help. Tell them that you have had enough.

Or perhaps we do have teenage or twenty-something daughters, but we’re confident unintended pregnancy is an issue to be dealt with in somebody else’s house (a dangerous assumption, but one for another post).

The fact is: The issue of unintended pregnancy among our young people affects every citizen in South Carolina—man, woman and child—right now. Births to teen mothers alone cost our state $156,000,000* every year, and every taxpaying family in South Carolina pays the tab. It’s an astounding number and reason enough to sound the battle cry for greater support of evidence-based prevention programs that research has proven will reduce South Carolina’s teen pregnancy statistics.

But there is so much more. The cost to young mothers, and their children, is heartbreaking. At a greater risk of social and economic disadvantage throughout their lives, one study shows that only 51 percent of teen mothers get their high school degree by the age of 22, and 30 percent of teen girls identify pregnancy or parenting as a reason for dropping out of school.**

Children of teen mothers are more likely to:

• have a lower birth weight
• grow up poor
• live in single-parent households
• experience abuse and neglect
• enter the child welfare system
• score lower on reading and math assessments when entering kindergarten
• not graduate from high school

What’s more, sons of teen mothers are more likely to be incarcerated. Daughters of teen mothers are more likely to become teen parents themselves.*** And it goes on.

I admit, these are not easy facts to hold in your head, much less your heart. It is much easier to let them go, to consider them someone else’s problem. But they are profound truths for so many in our state. These girls don’t stand a chance if we—women who know—choose to look away.

Make a difference. Take action now with an email to your legislators. And share this post with every friend you think might join us. I believe there’s no more important issue for women in South Carolina today.

* http://www.thenationalcampaign.org/costs/pdf/states/southcarolina/press_release.pdf

**http://www.teenpregnancysc.org/documents/Making+the+Connection_Educational+Achievement.pdf

***http://www.thenationalcampaign.org/costs/pdf/report/BTN_Executive_Summary.pdf

The economic reality of unintended pregnancy is that this issues costs the taxpayers of South Carolina spend $156 million annually. And the numbers of teen and unintended pregnancies are rising. According to a study by the Guttmacher Institute, the pregnancy rate for girls between ages 15-19 has increased 3%. The Guttmacher Institute study goes on to say,

“The significant drop in teen pregnancy rates in the 1990s was overwhelmingly the result of more and better use of contraceptives among sexually active teens. However, this decline started to stall out in the early 2000s, at the same time that sex education programs aimed exclusively at promoting abstinence—and prohibited by law from discussing the benefits of contraception—became increasingly widespread and teens’ use of contraceptives declined.[1]”

This rise in the teen pregnancy numbers has many concerned. ““It’s very disturbing,” said Sarah Brown, of the National Campaign to Prevent Teen and Unplanned Pregnancy. “We had over a decade of progress on a very serious problem, and I worry that we’ve ground to a halt. I think there are a lot of different factors at play, from less use of contraception, maybe because of less fear of AIDS, to our anything-goes culture, where it’s O.K. to get pregnant and have a baby in your teens.[2]”

Without a comprehensive reproductive education and increased access to clinics and services, the teen pregnancy rates in South Carolina will continue to rise, as will the cost to the taxpayer. We need to stand together, and demand better reproductive health policies for the future generations of South Carolinians.

The cost to teens and their babies is as big a concern to me as is the economic cost to the taxpayers. We owe it to future generations to stop this issue at its source and provide the proper education and access to medical services.

[2]Lewin, Tamar; After Long Decline, Teenage Pregnancy Rate Rises; The New York Times; Jan 26, 2010: http://www.nytimes.com/2010/01/27/us/27teen.html?emc=eta1