California’s teen birth rate has been dropping for several years, decreasing from 37 per 1,000 in 2005 to 29 in 1,000 in 2010. But it remains disproportionately high in some areas, like the heavily Latino and low-income area around Roosevelt High School in Los Angeles.

To help students prevent pregnancy, Roosevelt High School partnered with Planned Parenthood to offer contraception and counseling at an on-campus health clinic separate from the school nurse’s office. The program began in 1997 as a collaboration with a local hospital, but it ended in 2006 — and after the clinic’s nurse saw 32 positive pregnancy tests between March 1 and June 1 of 2008, she reached out to Planned Parenthood.

Now, the women’s health organization provides a nurse assistant, free contraception, and pregnancy and STD testing to students. A California program that provides family planning to low-income and uninsured residents pays for the services, and students do not have to have their parents’ permission to visit the health clinic. But officials say they do not face strong opposition from parents:

Nurse practitioner Sherry Medrano, who runs the Roosevelt health clinic, said teenagers rarely go outside their comfort zone for family planning. By law, students can go to Medrano and her staff without the permission of their parents. “They feel much safer and much more comfortable coming to a school-based health clinic,” she said. [...]

Planned Parenthood’s Los Angeles executive director, Sue Dunlap, said Latino families generally want access to information and care. “We really don’t experience the traditional narrative of angry parents not wanting access to reproductive care in the schools,” she said. “It’s really the opposite.”

The teen pregnancy rate has dropped to the lowest level in 40 years, which researchers contribute to better contraception use by teenagers. Giving students the information they need as well as increased access to contraception, as Roosevelt High School has done, will help them to prevent unintended pregnancies and actively protect their own health.

A bill that would outlaw abortion after 20 weeks, regardless of the woman’s or fetus’ health, is being pushed through the Michigan legislature on Thursday. The measure does not include an exception for rape or incest.

A Michigan House panel approved the legislation, HB 5711, as well as two supplements that restrict abortion access beyond 20 weeks of pregnancy and impose new regulations that could force several abortion clinics in the state to go out of business.

The House has now taken up the measure just a week after it was introduced and it is expected to advance to the state senate.

Several states — including Georgia and Arizona — have recently banned abortion after 20 weeks of gestation. In fact, a Congressman from Michigan recently proposed enacting the ban in Washington, DC.

Our guest blogger is Jessica Arons, director of the women’s health and rights program at the Center for American Progress.

June 7 marks the 47th anniversary of Griswold v. Connecticut, the Supreme Court ruling that determined the Constitution contains a fundamental right to privacy that includes the use of contraception. But almost half a century after that landmark decision, the courts are once again embroiled in litigation about contraception.

In 1965 the question was whether the government could ban the sale of contraception to married couples. Today the question is whether the government can require religiously affiliated employers to cover contraception in employee health plans.

That’s progress. Contraception has come a long way from being classified as a contraband possession—and is now a preventive health service deemed so vital that the Department of Health and Human Services has required that starting in August it be covered by all health plans without charging co-pays or other costs to the patient. It has gone from something used furtively (“Mad Men” fans will remember Peggy being lectured by her doctor not to become a “strumpet” after going on the pill) to something that enjoys widespread public support and that has been used by 99 percent of sexually active women.

This near-universal acceptance is what makes the current wave of lawsuits and legislation challenging the regulation so surprising and has most people asking, “What’s the big deal?” The big deal, according to the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops—who have spearheaded the charge against the Health and Human Services Department’s regulation on contraceptive coverage—is that requiring employers to cover contraception violates the religious liberty of those who object to birth control.

There are a few things to keep in mind about the conference’s arguments, however.
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