Breaking News! New study shows 2+2=4

If you are wondering why they would need a study to show 2+2=4, that’s exactly how I felt when I saw the two headlines:

“Free birth control cuts abortion rate dramatically, study finds”

“HPV vaccine not tied to increased promiscuity for girls”

The results of the first study followed an experiment “when more than 9,000 women ages 14 to 45 in the St. Louis area were given no-cost contraception for three years.” And the results? “Among teen girls ages 15 to 19 who participated in the study, the annual birth rate was 6.3 per 1,000 girls, far below the U.S. rate of 34.3 per 1,000 for girls the same age.” And “abortion rates dropped from two-thirds to three-quarters lower than the national rate.” So providing women access to no-cost contraception means dramatically lowered unintended pregnancy and abortion rates. All right. Sounds good. So maybe those of us advocating for the no co-pay contraceptive coverage rule in the health care law are not so misguided after all…

And the second study…well, it found that “[p]reteen girls who received the HPV vaccine were no more likely than unvaccinated girls to get pregnant, develop sexually transmitted infections, or seek birth-control counseling,.” So providing a vaccine against HPV does not encourage promiscuity. Whew, so glad we got that big question out of the way. Now can we go back to providing vaccines to women to protect them from viruses that can lead to cancer? Pretty please.