The abortion debate has long been a heated battle between the red and blue states. As it turns out, contraception availability may not be the same liberal-conservative dispute.

The Guttmacher Institute released a report two weeks ago ranking all states based on their contraception availability. California ranked first overall but was followed by traditionally conservative states Alaska, South Carolina and Alabama.

The study looked at service availability, laws and policies, and public funding to determine overall availability. The report looked at all 50 states' most current data, up until November 2005.

Pennsylvania's total score of 39 landed it in the middle, ranked 31st overall.

Ben Douglass, outreach coordinator for Penn State Students for Life, said that because Pennsylvania's politics are fairly middle-of-the-road, its overall ranking did not come as a surprise.

"You wouldn't expect it to be either a New York or a North Dakota," he said.

Stephanie Underwood, spokeswoman for Planned Parenthood of the Susquehanna Valley, said the report indicates that state legislators need to take more steps to adopt policies that support family planning services and ensure access to contraception. "Unfortunately, many states still fail the women in their communities by hindering access to contraception," Underwood said.

Douglass said contraception options should not be considered in sexual education programs. "We believe students should be taught the sacredness of the marriage bond, the sinfulness of contraception and that the purpose of marital union is procreation," he said.

According to Guttmacher, of the 6 million pregnancies in the U.S. each year, nearly half are unintended. Of these unintended pregnancies, 1.4 million result in births and 1.3 million end in abortion annually.

The Guttmacher Institute promotes the protection of the reproduction choices of all men and women in the United States. Embedded in its report is a rejection of the abstinence-only sexual education programs enforced today.

Meghan Ochs, president of the Penn State Feminist Majority Leadership Alliance, said the study's emphasis on comprehensive sexual education programs was a step in the right direction.

"Studies show over and over again, abstinence-only programs don't work," Ochs said.

She said the fact that several conservative states ranked near the top is a sign that conservatives and liberals can land on opposite sides of the abortion debate and still agree that contraception can help to avoid the abortion issue altogether. "A lot of conservatives who are anti-choice haven't come to that conclusion yet, but it's fairly obvious," Ochs said. "If you give women choices as far as contraception goes, the number of abortions will decrease."

Douglass, however, said he did not buy this assertion.

"The argument doesn't hold water because historically, that is not how things have played out in America," Douglass said. "Most methods of contraception have a fairly significant failure rate, even if it's only 2 to 3 percent."

Douglass said the rejection of abstinence-only programs goes directly against what Students for Life stands for. "We believe that life begins at conception, so we are against any method that destroys life after that," he said.