What are some of the problems that women who are on Medicaid have with family planning? Why is it so important to address this issue of economic...

The repeated attempts to defund Planned Parenthood by the Republican party have put in place many de facto barriers to access for family planning for women living in poverty. This is a problem because lack of access to family planning results in increased rates of teen pregnancy and unintended pregnancy. This leads to two negative outcomes. The first is an increase in abortion rates and the second is an increase in unplanned pregnancies, especially among teenagers. Unplanned pregnancies, especially in teens, contribute to a cycle of poverty. Pregnant teens are less likely to complete school and get good jobs. While daycare can help with some of these issues, it is not always available in poor neighborhoods and daycare fees are not always affordable. Even worse, when drug addicts or alcoholics are confronted with unplanned pregnancies, the resulting babies may be affected by fetal alcohol syndrome or other issues interfering with their physical and mental development.

Some barriers to family planning for people on Medicaid are practical and others cultural. On a practical level, clinics that accept Medicaid may not be easily accessible outside work hours and people on Medicaid may lack access to transportation. The GOP on both a state and nation level has tried to limit funding for family planning and defund health care providers who offer family planning services, making such services much less accessible to people living in poverty. Lack of medically sound sex education in public schools in many states means that many people living in poverty, and especially blacks and Hispanics, are unaware of safe and effective forms of birth control or even of medically sound information about how people get pregnant and how to prevent it.