Lawmakers in Colorado are wearing IUD jewelry to show bipartisan support for a bill that would direct $5 million to “Our Colorado Family Planning”, an endangered program that provides IUDs and other long-acting reversible contraceptives to poor women. As Kerry Eleveld noted in GOP lawmaker hopes to end Colorado program that lowered teen birth and abortion rates,this program has been under attack by the right-wing for ideological reasons.
But a new movement to sign up support uses IUD jewelry produced by Akron-based jewelry designer Virginia Smith (also an OB-GYN) and sold on Etsy. The jewelry, made from a resin, looks like a typical IUD, where the strings have been replaced by a clip.
As the lovely, talented and very smart Eve Andrews wrote on Grist:
Some very swag Colorado lawmakers, including a self-designated “redneck Republican,” can now be found decorating themselves with contraceptives. This is not, for the record, because IUDs are so plentiful in Colorado that there aren’t enough cervixes to hold them (sorry) — on the contrary. An initiative that allows Colorado women to get long-acting reversible contraceptives such as IUDs at minimal cost will lose its private funding in June, and a proposed bipartisan bill would provide that initiative with $5 million to keep operating.
Andrews explains how you can make your own at
Wear your support for reproductive rights on your head — here’s how. But I just went and bought one from Smith on
Etsy.
More about the bill if you flip below the fold....
The program will lose its funding at the end of June unless the legislature takes action. But a “red-neck” Republican, Rep. Don Coram, has signed on as one of the co-sponsors. According to the The Denver Post:
[He] agreed to co-sponsor the bill with Becker after seeing the emotional and financial toll of teen pregnancy in his community and the nation. For every dollar put into the program, he says, citing a state study, it avoids an estimated $5.85 in the state's Medicaid program over a three-year period.
(
IUD jewelry emerges at Colorado capitol to demystify and educate on birth control
by John Frank.)
Coram says he thinks this is one of the most important bills they are looking at. It is. The state gave out 30,000 free or low-cost contraceptives over five years. Teen birth rates are down 40% in that time. It's now at a 24-year historic low. (More statistics and details about the program at Birth-control, not abstinence, focus for Colorado teens by Electra Draper in The Denver Post.)
With even “conservative” Republicans signed up, it may be possible to get this bill through if enough concerned people in Colorado get behind it. Providing long-acting contraceptives is a huge win because it reduces unwanted pregnancies (something like 40% of pregnancies in the U.S. are still unwanted), providing relief to women who generally do not have the resources or the desire to raise children. It eliminates the problem at the very beginning, where it is cheapest and easiest to deal with. This is a high-leverage point to do good. Are you on board?