{"id":70565,"date":"2017-04-06T18:10:26","date_gmt":"2017-04-07T00:10:26","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/bill-increasing-contraceptive-access-in-colorado-okd-by-committee\/"},"modified":"2017-04-07T00:10:26","modified_gmt":"2017-04-07T00:10:26","slug":"bill-increasing-contraceptive-access-in-colorado-okd-by-committee","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/bill-increasing-contraceptive-access-in-colorado-okd-by-committee\/","title":{"rendered":"Bill increasing contraceptive access in Colorado OK\u2019d by committee"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

\"Representative
Representative Don Coram<\/span>du1-i-syn<\/span><\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<\/p>

DENVER \u2013 Sen. Don Coram, R-Montrose, had a startling revelation for his fellow Senators Wednesday during the committee hearing for a bill increasing women\u2019s access to contraceptive medicines.<\/p>\n

\u201cI\u2019m far past the need for this personally. My most effective birth control seem to be my looks and my personality,\u201d Coram said to open up the hearing for House Bill 1186, which would require insurance providers in Colorado to dispensing a year\u2019s worth of contraceptive medicine rather than in only three month increments.<\/p>\n

Coram said he was honored to carry the bill as it is something that is near and dear to him from his time on the board of Montrose County School district.<\/p>\n

The high school in Montrose had a strikingly high teen pregnancy rate, Coram said. \u201cThe school was referred to by other communities as \u2018maternity high school\u2019 instead of Montrose High School.\u201d<\/p>\n

To counteract this, the school board partnered with nearby communities to create a program to educate students on contraceptive options.<\/p>\n

Coram said since then he has done a lot of research on the effects of contraceptives. Not only do they lower the rate of unintended pregnancies and abortions, but by doing so they increase a woman\u2019s chances at thriving in life.<\/p>\n

Women who become pregnant unintentionally are less likely to graduate from college unless they have a powerful support system around them.<\/p>\n

Coram\u2019s analysis of the effects of increasing access to contraceptives was echoed by most of those who testified on HB 1186.<\/p>\n

Marissa Ronk, an attorney in Denver, said women who travel for their work can often find themselves out of town when their prescription runs out, something she has experienced herself.<\/p>\n

\u201cI have been lucky and never had this result in an unplanned pregnancy, but that\u2019s not to say this will be the case, or is always the case, for every women,\u201d Ronk said.<\/p>\n

Critics of the bill argued that having a ready supply of contraceptive would lead to promiscuity among young women. They also cited studies on the connections of contraceptives and certain types of cancer.<\/p>\n

Ultimately, the Senate State, Veterans and Military Affairs Committee decided the hearing was not about the side effects or morality of contraceptives, but on increasing access to a doctor-prescribed medication and voted 4-1 to move HB 1186 to the full Senate.<\/p>\n

Sen. Vicki Marble, R-Fort Collins, was the lone no vote and said since some insurance companies offer coverage for a year supply of these medications, she didn\u2019t see the need to make it a law.<\/p>\n

For people in rural Colorado that isn\u2019t good enough, Coram said. \u201cIf you live where I do, where you only have one insurance provider, it\u2019s a different story.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Measure would allow filling year\u2019s prescription at once<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":70566,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[],"tags":[14,21,28],"naviga_topic":[],"class_list":["post-70565","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","tag-colorado-state-house-of-representatives","tag-cortez","tag-headlines"],"acf":[],"author_name":"dh_admin","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/70565","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=70565"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/70565\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/70566"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=70565"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=70565"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=70565"},{"taxonomy":"naviga_topic","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/naviga_topic?post=70565"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}