A conversation with Roosevelt Institute Senior Fellow Ellen Chesler on why funding for Planned Parenthood makes dollars and sense.

The Guttmacher Institute has found that for every dollar invested in family planning about four are saved. Why is that? Pregnancy is very expensive, as is raising a child, for women who can't afford it. "There is no better preventative investment than family planning," Roosevelt Institute Senior Fellow Ellen Chesler says. After all, the cost burden shifts to the public sector for children who are born into poverty.

But there's another cost that all of us feel when women are denied access to family planning: "Women can't do their jobs, create new jobs, or add to the country's economic well-being if they can't control their fertility," she points out. Women make up nearly half of the workforce and help drive the U.S. economy. If we're constantly at risk of becoming pregnant all the time, it is very difficult to do our jobs, particularly with the lack of social programs that benefit us or help with balancing work and family. "It's as important a tool to us as education and health care," she says.

Evidence of the economic impact of giving women control over their reproduction can be found around the world. There is a "demographic dividend," she says, when family planning is introduced in a developing country. Women are then freed to enter the formal economy and produce economic growth. "There is a direct correlation between prosperity and democracy," Ellen points out. The countries with very high fertility rates, such as Afghanistan, have no way to grow their economies. Ironically, one of the success stories within the Middle East region is Iran, as it has the best family planning programs in the area and is able to educate and employ its youth. "This is a way to create jobs," she emphasized. Not to mention fight the desperation that fuels the fundamentalism and anti-Americanism that threatens our national security. "It's not just an economic issue, but a national security issue," she adds.

Meanwhile, if Title X funding is eliminated in a deal to keep the government open, someone else will have to provide the services that women turn to Planned Parenthood for. "The government gets a very good deal" by contracting with it, Ellen says. "They're a cost effective provider of family planning and other services." There are entire regions of the country where there is no major provider of the services women rely on Planned Parenthood for -- pap smears, STD testing, cancer screenings, birth control -- so they go to the local Planned Parenthood. If the government has to take over all of these functions, it loses out on the portion of money Planned Parenthood raises itself by being a well-established, voluntary association. Not to mention that women either lose these preventative services, causing longer term burdens on public assistance, or must pay much more expensive providers. "One in five women will have used Planned Parenthood in her lifetime," she notes. "That's a lot. Everyone knows someone who has."

So why in the world would Republicans target Planned Parenthood and its vital, cost-saving services? Politics are front and center. Planned Parenthood, just like labor unions, not only provides services but is also a well-organized political body with the potential to mobilize voters in all 50 states. Ever since 1984 there has been a gender gap in voting every year except after 9/11, when security concerns trumped all others, and the past midterms, when economic concerns ruled. But even in the midterms, women were the ones who helped beat back the Republican tide for the candidates who went to bat for women's health. Women are the swing voters, and it drives Republicans crazy to keep losing to Planned Parenthood's supporters.

But ultimately, this tactic of attacking Planned Parenthood will fail. "Seventy percent of Americans under the age of 35 feel that this campaign is wrong," Ellen says. The demographics are split by age, with young people on Planned Parenthood's side. "The future is not what Republicans want; it's with us."

Bryce Covert is Assistant Editor at New Deal 2.0.