Colorado’s Push Against Teenage Pregnancies Is a Startling Success - The New York Times

The change in sexual morality in the past fifty years is certainly closely tied to birth control pills.  The consequences of sex outside marriage was no longer pregnancy - and sex could be pursued for intimacy or even recreation. But contraception was not foolproof and it required discipline, and money.  Abortions as a remedy for failed birth control increased markedly - and came to be seen as a right.  Choice!
The Church railed against "artificial contraception" in a losing effort to reverse the tide.  The campaign against legal abortion became almost its defining objective.  They were unable to seek to reduce abortions by contraception since Pope Paul VI surprised everyone with his prohibition in Humanae Vitae.
Now for many Christianity and traditional sexual morality are synonymous if not co-equal.  It will be interesting to see how the recalcitrant traditionalists of Mirror Justice respond to this. - gwc
Colorado’s Push Against Teenage Pregnancies Is a Startling Success - The New York Times
by Sabrina Tavernise

WALSENBURG, Colo. — Over the past six years, Colorado has conducted one of the largest ever real-life experiments with long-acting birth control. If teenagers and poor women were offered free intrauterine devices and implants that prevent pregnancy for years, state officials asked, would those women choose them?

They did in a big way, and the results were startling. The birthrate for teenagers across the state plunged by 40 percent from 2009 to 2013, while their rate of abortions fell by 42 percent, according to the Colorado Department of Public Health and Environment. There was a similar decline in births for another group particularly vulnerable to unplanned pregnancies: unmarried women under 25 who have not finished high school.

“Our demographer came into my office with a chart and said, ‘Greta, look at this, we’ve never seen this before,’ ” said Greta Klingler, the family planning supervisor for the public health department. “The numbers were plummeting.”

The changes were particularly pronounced in the poorest areas of the state, places like Walsenburg, a small city in Southern Colorado where jobs are scarce and unplanned births come often to the young. Hope Martinez, a 20-year-old nursing home receptionist here, recently had a small metal rod implanted under the skin of her upper arm to prevent pregnancy for three years. She has big plans — to marry, to move West, and to become a dental hygienist.