This week, the Missouri and Montana state legislatures took steps to scale back access to contraception for the citizens who need it most, those confronting difficult economic times. The lawmakers seem to have missed the thousands of articles penned in the last few weeks about a flood of Americans turning to birth control as a way to insure their economic survival in uncertain times.

The recent scale back in access to contraception will likely come with its costs too. For example, between 1991 and 2004 there have been more than 141,600 teen births in Missouri, costing taxpayers a total of $3.3 billion in services over that period.

In Montana, Republican legislators decided to scale back contraceptive access and targeted teens, the very population that as Missouri shows, need it most. They eliminated coverage for birth control in the state insurance programs for adolescents because, as Rep. Penny Morgan a Billings Republican explained, "[Republicans] don't feel that government should be paying for children to have contraceptives. The dollars and cents, I don't think, have anything to do with it,"

Tell that to the tax-payers who will be footing the bill.

The Bozeman Daily Chronicle reported, "The Republican-led push to remove contraceptive coverage from the Children's Health Insurance Program would save the state about $70,000 and cost it $233,212 in matching funds from the federal government."

This decision is not only bizarre given the fiscal climate (what state can get away with refusing federal funds for such basic preventive health services?), it's also crazy given recent trends in teen pregnancy in the state. Recent data show a significant increase in the Montana teen birth rate for 2006, enough to alarm officials at the state's Department of Public Health and Human Services. The state teen birth rate increased 9 percent in 2006, the biggest single year increase since 1990.

It's looks like legislators are hoping to break that record.