California’s Medicaid-funded Family Planning, Access, Care and Treatment Program (Family PACT) has successfully expanded access to reproductive health services for a significant number of the state’s low-income residents, according to the Guttmacher Report on Public Policy. A study by the Institute for Health Policy Studies and University of California-San Francisco Department of Obstetrics, Gynecology, and Reproductive Services estimated that the program prevented 108,000 unintended pregnancies, including 24,000 teen pregnancies, and avoided 41,000 abortions, including 9,000 for teens, a group particularly at-risk for unsafe abortion because of teens’ limited access to reproductive services. While Family PACT spent $114.4 million dollars in FY 1997-98, the study estimated that the pregnancies it prevented would have cost $511.8 million in medical, social services, and education costs.
Read the Guttmacher Report on Public Policy article on Family PACT.
