Colorful and glittery, they dangle from lawmakers’ ears and lobbyists’ lapels, drawing inquisitive looks and plenty of questions.
What is it? The answer usually draws surprise, sometimes a few laughs and often another question. Really?
“It’s fun to see if people notice them or not,” says state Rep. KC Becker, a Boulder Democrat. “Usually it’s the women who can identify what that is. They are most familiar with what it looks like.”
It’s not a fishing lure — the most common guess. It’s an intrauterine device, or IUD.
Not a real one, but a resin replica of the popular birth control device fashioned into jewelry. Women wear a pair as earrings. Men hook one to a lapel as a pin.
Gross, educational or just funny, the IUD jewelry is emerging as one of the most visible political symbols this legislative session.
It signifies support for a bipartisan bill that would direct $5 million toward a program that provides IUDs or other long-acting, reversible contraceptives to women at little or no cost. The current program is funded with private money that expires June 30.
The goal is to demystify IUDs and educate lawmakers on legislation to push back against a familiar and bitter debate in Colorado about abortion and contraception.
“It helps kind of get the conversation going, as well as alleviate fears people have when they hear the term IUD,” says Dr. Larry Wolk, Colorado’s chief medical officer.
Politics are no stranger to symbols. Pink ribbons. Red states and blue states. Rainbow flags. They convey messages and identity. And the odd ones — think burning bras from women’s liberation — often leave lasting impressions.
In the Colorado legislature, the IUD jewelry likely represents one of the stranger emblems ever used to influence lawmakers on a bill.
“It’s very unusual when you think of it as a symbol,” says Frank Baumgartner, a University of North Carolina professor who has researched political symbolism. “It’s shocking because it’s so out of the norm.”
IUD jewelry’s story
The story behind the lobbying push starts with Virginia Smith in Akron, Ohio.
She started making jewelry as “a little, little girl” and now sells her creations on Etsy, an online marketplace for artisans.
A year ago, a friend in the women’s health field asked Smith to make a pair of earrings that looked like IUDs. She laughed at first; then she accepted the challenge.
“I can re-create objects if I just have a visual of it,” Smith explains. “I made a mold and used several materials at first that didn’t work as well. Then, in a craft store, I found this resin … put glitter and colors in them, and there you have it.”
It helps that Smith is an OB-GYN. “I can’t tell you how many IUDs I’ve placed in patients,” she says.
The advocates for the Colorado bill found her Etsy site and bought 15 pairs — her largest order at the time.
Then, as their popularity spread at the Capitol, another order came for 75. All told, Smith has sold nearly 200 pairs of IUD earrings to Colorado customers, making it her No. 1 seller.
Most customers don’t explain the reasoning behind their purchases, but the Colorado advocates told Smith about the bill. She supports the program.
“I deal with these young ladies day in and day out, and I see their struggles,” she says, months from finishing a residency at Akron General Medical Center . “A pregnancy that is unplanned especially for a young woman … can be devastating.”
Bill and the real IUD
Eliza Schultz, a lobbyist for the Colorado Department of Public Health and Environment, gives the earrings to supporters — but she doesn’t wear them herself.
Instead, she carries an actual IUD. “It’s hard to talk about sex,” Schultz says. With the IUD, “we can start the conversation with fact.”
Light blue and green, it is shaped like a thin T, one inch in both directions, with flexible arms. Fine wire strings extend from the stem instead of a hook for an earring.
Different ones work different ways, but the one Schultz shows lawmakers is placed in the uterus for five years, where it slowly releases small amounts of hormones that inhibit sperm from fertilizing a woman’s egg and blocks implantation by thinning the lining of the uterine wall.
A frequent reaction she gets from lawmakers: “The whole debate is about this little thing?”
The other tool Schultz uses to push the bill are statistics from the current program, which show the Colorado Family Planning Initiative contributed to a 42 percent decline in the state’s teen abortion rate and a 39 percent drop in the teen birth rate in five years.
For critics, the opposition is largely philosophical. Even with an IUD, in rare cases a sperm can still fertilize an egg.
The widely accepted scientific definition of a pregnancy is implantation. But some conservatives consider a fertilized egg as the moment of conception. And funding such a program, they argue, would violate a constitutional provision blocking direct or indirect funding for abortions.
Other Republican critics oppose spending the money on a privately funded program. Sen. Larry Crowder, R-Alamosa, says the health care expansion under what is known as Obamacare should cover the contraceptives. “I do believe it to be unnecessary because of multiple funding levels in place,” he says. “I do believe we have to safeguard the taxpayer’s purse on this.”
Republican state Rep. Don Coram of Montrose opposes abortion, but he agreed to co-sponsor the bill with Becker after seeing the emotional and financial toll of teen pregnancy in his community and the nation. For every dollar put into the program, he says, citing a state study, it avoids an estimated $5.85 in the state’s Medicaid program over a three-year period.
A teenage unintended pregnancy “sets them up in a cycle of poverty. Eighty percent of them will be on welfare within a year. Many will drop out of school,” he says.
With his support, the bill won approval in its first House hearing and now awaits action in another committee. Another Republican lawmaker sided with Democrats to earmark $5 million for the program in next year’s state budget.
But Senate President Bill Cadman, R-Colorado Springs, is opposed, and Coram isn’t hopeful.
“So many around here would rather ignore the problem than deal with the problem,” he says in frustration about his fellow Republicans.
“They are afraid, and frankly they don’t have the courage to do things.”
Coram wore one of the earrings as a lapel pin. He hooked his next to his American flag and Colorado House pins.
He acknowledges it’s an unlikely cause for him.
“A redneck Republican wearing an IUD — it just doesn’t make sense does it?” he says
“Seriously, though,” he pivots, “I think this is one of the most important bills we are looking at.”
John Frank: 303-954-2409, jfrank@denverpost.com or twitter.com/ByJohnFrank
