That seems like a politically safe recommendation.

Hahaha what?

I'm not sure why greater availability (the same as improved access?) to cheap and effective contraception would be seen as politically safe. We know where a good portion of the right stand on sex education and contraception of all kinds.

I have to agree with the above commenters so far. Providing contraception to those that are least likely to have good access to it (those below the poverty line and minors) is a very politically charged issue.

I mean it shouldn't be, but a good chunk of those on the right side of the political spectrum feel they need to be the sex police.

[sarcasm]*
Providing access to education and contraception to minors encourages them to have sex and more importantly usurps parental power. And of course poor people don't deserve to have sex unless they can pay for it and should relegate themselves to poverty induced abstinence. Besides providing cheap anything is *gasp* socialism and has to be stamped out lest we let the commies win.
[/sarcasm]

*Just in case, it is the internet after all.

Or, you know, increasing legislative restrictions on abortion combined with a decreasing population of providers has resulted in less access...

Am I missing something? How can we surmise this was attributable to contraception without also looking at pregnancy rates?

Both of the above. There has been a significant decrease in access over the past 20 years. Of course, we would need to know if there is a corresponding increase in births.

I can't believe 2% of all women that age get an abortion every year. That would mean that on average more than every second* women would have an aborting in the 30 years it takes her to age from 15 to 44. (It would obviously be less than that because while you can have an abortion twice you can't have half of an abortion.) Still that seems REALLY excessive.

Or is my male view on that just really off?

*(1-0.02)^30~=0.54

Excuse my bad math. 0.54 is the chance to have no abortion at all, so 1-0.54=0.46 is the chance to have at least one abortion.

So it's not slightly more than half of the women, but slightly less.

A change in attitude toward minors anticipating sex is needed. Contraceptives are already pretty easily available but we ask kids to live by a fiction of not intending sex. Mother Nature has been at this game a lot longer than our social taboos have been.

"That seems like a politically safe recommendation."

You would think that, but Megan McCain was blasted by the Right for saying that in an article for the Daily Beast.

It's frustrating that so many see abortion, contraception, and sex as a zero sum game - don't have sex, but if you do and get pregnant keep the baby, but then you don't deserve any help once it gets here because, oh yeah, you shouldn't have been having sex in the first place.

There is no moral reason at all to decrease abortion. To say that is only to cave to the baseless conservative worldview. 240 million natural abortions occur every year. If that is no problem then the comparatively tiny number of surgical abortions don't matter at all. If anything we need more abortions. Given the extremely hostile environment many young women likely opt out of an abortion because of fear, peer pressure and adaptive preferences rather than autonomous choice.

Perhaps this only means that abortions are harder to get and fewer women have a choice?