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So this amazing thing happened in Colorado.

Somebody gave, we don't know who, what organizations, what individuals.

They gave this large private donation, $5 million to the state in 2009 to fund an experimental

program that provided free or

cut rate IUDs and other form of long-lasting contraception to teenagers in that state.

And how'd that experimental program do?

It did great.

40% drop in Colorado's teen birth rate over five years.

The teen abortion rate dropped by 35% between 2009 and 2012 in the counties in Colorado that were served by the program. And it saved Colorado all sorts of money, too. For every dollar spent on the program, the state saved an estimated $5.85 and money they didn't have to spend on welfare programs.

There's a lot of writing about this program as people are beginning to assess it and

see how successful it was last year. And I wrote this after reading these results,

which are tremendous. The lesson in Colorado for conservatives ought to be this. You can be

against abortion or you can be against contraception,

but you cannot be against abortion and against contraception. And they are increasingly, right?

Wingers are against contraception. They are fighting contraception. But conservatives who oppose

contraception increasingly and are fighting it, fighting access to it, we have to make them eat this

fact that opposing contraception,

making contraception harder for women to get means more unplanned pregnancies and more unplanned

pregnancies mean more abortions. So if you are fighting contraception, you are fighting for abortion.

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