A state health initiative to reduce teen birth rates by providing more than 30,000 contraceptive devices at low or no cost has led to a 40 percent drop in five years, Gov. John Hickenlooper said Thursday.

The Colorado Family Planning Initiative, funded by a private anonymous donor for five years, has provided intrauterine devices and other implants to low-income women at 68 family-planning clinics across Colorado since 2009.

The clinics are in local health departments, hospitals and private nonprofit facilities. The program also provided training and technical assistance to family planning clinics statewide.

“When families are planned and women have children when they’re ready and want them … it’s really a better situation for everyone,” Hickenlooper said during his state Capitol news conference.

Seven of every 10 teen pregnancies in Colorado are unintended, officials said.

The decline in births among girls 15 to 19 years old served by the program accounted for three-quarters of the overall decline in the Colorado teen birth rate, the state said in a news release.

That rate has fallen from 37 births per 1,000 girls in 2009 to 22 in 2013, officials said.

The teen abortion rate dropped 35 percent from 2009 to 2012 in those counties where the initiative is in place, Hickenlooper said.

Carrie Gordon Earll, senior director of public policy for the conservative Christian ministry Focus on the Family, said she was skeptical of the state’s claim that increased access to IUDs and other birth control caused the steep decline in teen birth rates.

“What we have seen over many years is that access to contraception does not equal fewer unintended pregnancies and fewer abortions,” Earll said. “Availability of contraception leads to increased sexual activity, which leads to unintended pregnancies and abortions.”

Earll said she found it offensive that the state was dispensing IUDs and that teens don’t need to be accompanied by an adult to receive these forms of contraceptives.

“It totally undermines parental rights,” Earll said.

The program has helped thousands of young women avoid unintended pregnancy by using long-lasting, reversible contraceptives, which has reduced social and economic costs to the state, Dr. Larry Wolk, director of the Colorado Department of Public Health and Environment, said during the news conference with the governor.

Those costs include birth defects, low birth weight, elective abortion, maternal depression, increased risk of child abuse, lower educational attainment by mother, delayed prenatal care, high risk of physical violence against expectant mother and reduced rates of breastfeeding.

The family-planning program has saved $5.68 in Medicaid costs for every dollar spent on the contraceptives, the state said. The state has saved millions in health care expenditures — $42.5 million in public funds in 2010 alone based on the latest available data.

The decline improved Colorado’s standing among states from having the 29th-lowest teen birth rate in 2008 to being ranked 19th among states and the District of Columbia in 2012.

Electa Draper: 303-954-1276, edraper@ denverpost.com or twitter.com/electadraper