The first day of the 111th Congressional session saw the introduction in the Senate of the Prevention First Act, a bill that would dramatically increase access to family planning services just as America's families find themselves on ever more precarious financial footing.  The legislation would fully fund the country's family planning program, Title X, and require that health care insurers extend coverage to contraceptives, promoting birth control affordability.  

"More than 17 million women in the U.S. need publicly funded family planning services, and there is not enough funding to meet the need," said Planned Parenthood President Cecile Richards in a statement. "The Prevention First Act will help women and couples plan their families and their futures by expanding access to critically needed affordable family planning education and reproductive health care services."

Prevention First's cornerstones are expanding contraceptive access and providing medically-accurate sexuality education, two common ground measures anyone committed to reducing unintended pregnancy can support.

Advocates and the Majority Leader's office could not speak to a timetable for the bill yet, but said that the fact that it was introduced on Congress's first day in session sent a powerful message of support for the legislation.  Some of the bill's provisions could also be enacted by being included in other pieces of legislation, such health care reform legislation.

Planned Parenthood reports that the bill would:

• restore affordable birth control for millions of college and low-income women

• fully fund Title X, the nation's family planning program
• expand access to reproductive health care services for low-income women through Medicaid

• protect teens' health through medically accurate comprehensive sex education
• require equity in contraceptive insurance coverage
• improve awareness about emergency contraception
• protect and expand rape survivors' access to emergency contraception in emergency rooms

Representatives Louise M. Slaughter and Diana DeGette are planning to introduce the bill in the House later this week.

For more on Prevention First, read Kay Steiger's True Common Ground for the 111th Congress.  For more on common ground approaches, read Cristina Page's Can Common Ground Prevail?