110 HCON 177 IH: Expressing the sense of the Congress U.S. House of Representatives 2007-06-27 text/xml EN Pursuant to Title 17 Section 105 of the United States Code, this file is not subject to copyright protection and is in the public domain.

IV 110th CONGRESS 1st Session H. CON. RES. 177 IN THE HOUSE OF REPRESENTATIVES June 27, 2007 Mrs. Lowey submitted the following concurrent resolution; which was referred to the Committee on Energy and Commerce CONCURRENT RESOLUTION Expressing the sense of the Congress concerning contraceptives for women.

Whereas the United States has one of the highest rates of abortion in the industrialized world, with American women experiencing 1.3 million abortions every year; Whereas behind almost every abortion in the United States is an unintended pregnancy, therefore, efforts to reduce unintended pregnancy will reduce the number of abortions; Whereas the most effective way to prevent unintended pregnancy is to improve access to safe, affordable, effective contraceptive methods and to provide medically accurate information about how to use such methods; Whereas contraceptive use has declined slightly among all women and precipitously among low-income women and, as a result, unplanned pregnancy rates have risen among low-income women by 30 percent; Whereas a low-income woman today is 4 times as likely to have an unintended pregnancy and more than 4 times as likely to have an abortion as her higher-income counterpart; Whereas abortion rates have increased among low-income women, even as they have continued to decrease among more affluent women; Whereas the United States has established as a public health goal for the Nation to reduce the proportion of pregnancies that are unintended by 40 percent by 2010, and achieving this goal would reduce the annual number of abortions from 1,300,000 to 780,000; and Whereas the United States has an impressive capacity for marshaling the resources necessary to tackle pressing public health problems such as smoking, and the same should be done for the problem of unintended pregnancy by ensuring universal access to effective and affordable contraception: Now, therefore, be it

That the Congress— (1)supports a major, national campaign to help all women, regardless of income, avoid unintended pregnancy and abortion through access to contraception; and (2)supports programs and policies that make it easier for all women not only to obtain contraceptives but also to use them consistently and correctly over time.