Yesterday marked the 39th anniversary of Roe v. Wade. While all these years later many still disagree on the issue of abortion, many would agree on the value of focusing on efforts to reduce the need for abortion by preventing unintended pregnancy. And a significant way to prevent unintended pregnancy is to expand access to contraception.

And yet contraception has become a target of funding cuts in many states. New Jersey's cut of $7.5 million and Texas's cut of $73.6 million are just a couple of examples. This is happening even though contraception is widely supported. A June 2011 survey from Public Religion Research Institute (PDF) found that approximately eight in 10 (82%) Americans favor expanding access to birth control for women who cannot afford it, compared to only 16 percent who oppose it. Support is strong across all demographic, religious, and political groups, including the Tea Party.

All is not lost. A step in the right direction is a decision by the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) to include contraception as a preventive service under health reform, meaning health insurers must cover "all Food and Drug Administration approved contraceptive methods, sterilization procedures, and patient education and counseling for all women with reproductive capacity" without co-pays or deductibles for patients. Last week HHS elected to enforce this rule for almost all employers (PDF), making an exception only for those employers whose primary purpose relates to religious values and who serve and employ people who share those values--like churches.

But there is still much work to be done. A report by the CDC released last Thursday was the first to focus on teens who didn't want to get pregnant but did. They found that approximately one half (50.1%) of the teens surveyed were not using any method of birth control when they got pregnant.

Today, almost half (49%) of pregnancies in the U.S. are unplanned (PDF) and almost half of these end in abortion (43%). Regardless of one's stance on the legality or morality of abortion, contraception is critical to having healthier families and lower abortion rates.