According to a study conducted by Washington University in St. Louis including over 9,000 women, access to free birth control dramatically lowers the number of abortions.
The effect on teen pregnancy was striking: There were 6.3 births per 1,000 teenagers in the study. Compare that to a national rate of 34 births per 1,000 teens in 2010.
There also were substantially lower rates of abortion, when compared with women in the metro area and nationally: 4.4 to 7.5 abortions per 1,000 women in the study, compared with 13.4 to 17 abortions per 1,000 women overall in the St. Louis region, Peipert calculated. That's lower than the national rate, too, which is almost 20 abortions per 1,000 women.
In fact, if the program were expanded, one abortion could be prevented for every 79 to 137 women given a free contraceptive choice, Peipert's team reported in the journal Obstetrics & Gynecology.
And the good news is access to free birth control in private and employer-based insurance plans is now mandated by Obamacare.
Of course the irony is that those who campaign the hardest against access to free birth control are also strictly anti-choice.
