Rewire would like to introduce Amie Newman as a regular weekly writer. She is currently the communications manager for Aradia Women's Health Center. Amie was also on the original Board of Directors for Our Truths/Nuestras Verdades and her work has appeared on Alternet, as well as on her personal blog.

With its newest report on Title X, our federally funded family planning program, The Guttmacher Institute has practically handed our incoming congressional Democrats a plan for finding the "common ground" between reproductive rights advocates and foes.

Since 1970, Title X has provided contraception and other reproductive health care services and education to low-income women and men through its network of 4,600 clinics around the country. While the program is critical in serving the family planning needs of Americans who do not meet Medicaid's rigid requirements for eligibility it has been chronically under funded.

But the Guttmacher Institute, a sexual and reproductive health research organization, has released a report that, if embraced, might just be the how-to manual for a middle ground between ardent abortion rights advocates and "pro-life" partisans.

The report examines the impact of increasing funding for the Title X program by 10%, 25%, 50% and 100% and comes up with the common-sense conclusion that in every scenario, low-income women and families come out way ahead when we expand access to family planning and contraception.

If Title X's current $283 million budget were increased 100% (and since Title X funding has not been adjusted for inflation it has actually decreased by 60% since 1980) almost 244,000 unintended pregnancies and 116,000 unintended births would be prevented; and 98,000 abortions averted. This would all come at a savings of $793 million.

Shockingly simple, isn't it?

Access to family planning and reproductive health care services prevents unintended pregnancies, births and abortion – all while saving federal dollars.

While this may not be news to you or I, those of us on all sides of the political spectrum should receive this report as an early Christmas/Chanukah/Kwanzaa present. Because when we talk about closing the political gap between pro-choice and anti-abortion advocates, expanding access to family planning for low-income women is what can and should ultimately unite us.

While the abortion and unintended pregnancy rates have declined for more affluent women since 1995, poor women are now four times as likely to experience unintended pregnancy than higher-income women and more than three times as likely to have an abortion (Title X Guttmacher report, 2006). Clearly years of bitter brawling between politicos on both sides of the abortion debate have resulted in extremely negative consequences for low-income women.

The Guttmacher Institute's report is not the only olive branch offering out there. In September, a group of pro-choice and anti-choice Democratic house members came together to introduce a bill that calls for reducing the need for abortions by promoting contraception, reducing teen pregnancy and ensuring new mothers access to health care coverage and child care. The bill prioritizes the health and well-being of low-income women.

If passed, I hope it succeeds.

But we already know Title X works. It is the only program devoted exclusively to providing federally funded contraception and family planning services to low-income women. The impact of Title X has been tremendous. Between 1980 and 1999, it has helped prevent 19 million unplanned pregnancies. Had those pregnancies not been averted, millions of women would have been faced with unwanted pregnancies and many would have chosen abortion. It doesn't matter which political flag you fly, neither scenario would have reflected the most effective approach to caring for women's reproductive health needs.

Ultimately, increasing funding for Title X's family planning services is a simple solution that should be emphatically embraced by our newly elected democratic representatives. Expanding access to contraception might not help solve the larger ethical issues that seem to endlessly divide abortion adversaries. But I'd say it's a no-brainer that would put our new congress on the road towards that mecca of middle ground and give women in this country a holiday gift we could really use.

Editor's note: Did you miss the news about Bush appointing a contraception opponent to oversee Title X funds – Eric Keroack?