The Prevention First Act, sponsored by Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid, Rep. Louise Slaughter, and other family-planning supporters in Congress, proposes a thoughtful package of preventive-health and education measures designed to help reduce unintended pregnancy and, therefore, the need for abortion.  This commonsense legislation is something all lawmakers – regardless of their views on legal abortion – should wholeheartedly support.

The Prevention First Act will:

Help Women Obtain Family-Planning Services. 
The bill increases funding for the national family-planning program, Title X, and expands Medicaid family-planning services to cover more low-income women.

End Insurance Discrimination against Women. 
The legislation guarantees equity in contraceptive coverage by ensuring that private health plans offer the same level of coverage for contraceptives as they do for other prescription drugs and services.

Provide Compassionate Assistance for Rape Victims.  
Women who suffer from sexual assault should not have to face the additional trauma of unintended pregnancy.  This bill ensures that women who survive sexual assault receive factually accurate information about emergency contraception (EC) and access to EC upon request.

Improve Awareness about Emergency Contraception. 
This medication was approved by the FDA as safe and effective means of contraception and is now available directly from a pharmacy for individuals age 18 and over.  Unfortunately, very few women know of the medication, and too few doctors discuss it with their patients.  The Prevention First Act provides $10 million for important public-education programs to women and doctors about EC and its benefits.

Reduce Teen Pregnancy.
The bill provides $20 million in annual funding for competitive grants to public and private entities to establish or expand teen-pregnancy prevention programs.

Fund Honest, Realistic Sex-Education Programs. 
For the past 10 years, anti-choice activists have spent more than $1 billion in taxpayer dollars on unproven, dangerous "abstinence-only" programs that forbid teachers from discussing contraception except to talk about failure rates.  Recent studies reveal that many of these programs also include serious misinformation and sometimes even outright falsehoods.  The Prevention First Act would establish the first-ever federal program for honest, realistic sex education.  This section also ensures that all taxpayer-funded federal programs must be medically accurate and include information about both the health benefits and failure rates of contraception.