Conservatives Step Up Attacks On Public Funding For Birth Control (AUDIO)

http://www.npr.org/blogs/health/2011/09/07/140156682/conservatives-step-up-attacks-on-public-funding-for-birth-control



But Helen Alvare, a law professor at George Mason University, says she thinks there may be yet another reason why widespread use of birth control hasn't brought down the rate of unintended pregnancy more dramatically – something economists call risk compensation.

"If you lower the cost of things, people will buy more of it," she says. So "if you lower the cost of uncommitted sexual encounters, you completely dissociate sex from pregnancy and birth and a lifetime of child care. People will engage in more uncommitted sexual encounters."

And because birth control is not perfect, and people don't use it perfectly or consistently, she says, that will result in more unintended pregnancies.

But while calls to end federal funding for contraception may be on the rise, the public remains strongly on the other side, at least for now. A survey released last week by the Kaiser Family Foundation found two-thirds of respondents in favor of the new requirement for insurance plans to offer prescription birth control without a copay or deductible.