“Show me the money,” Cuba Gooding’s Rod Tidwell says in the movie, “Jerry McGuire.” I thought of this line when I approached a women’s organization to speak about unintended pregnancy among adult women.

These were women business executives. They insisted they wanted a program focused strictly on numbers and “the bottom line.”

They specifically didn’t want me to focus on the emotional costs and they didn’t want another program about a nonprofit working on a do-good program. They asked me to fill out a lengthy questionnaire about my remarks with questions like, “How much is unintended pregnancy costing us as business owners and taxpayers?”

As I filled out the questionnaire I realized that I had a lot to say about the hard costs of unintended pregnancy.

I made sure to start my remarks with numbers. I left out the part about my husband’s birth mother, who, at 23, had to give up the economic security of her job as a secretary to enter a home for unwed mothers. Too emotional.

Instead I started by asking, “If you had the chance to talk with your legislator about how you think the state could use a $47 million windfall, how would you ask them to use that money?” Because that’s how much teenage pregnancy costs taxpayers in Iowa every year and we’re not even sure yet how much unintended pregnancy among adult women costs us.

I explained that every dollar invested in pregnancy prevention saves four dollars down the road in costs for prenatal care, delivery and one year of infant-related care.

Our newest Iowa numbers, provided by the Guttmacher Institute, show that state and federal money supporting family planning services in Iowa saves $88 million a year in Medicaid costs, averts 20,000 pregnancies and 8,000 abortions.

I talked about how unintended pregnancy impacts business productivity. Employees distracted by issues connected with unintended pregnancies, sexually transmitted diseases or single moms worried about day care and whether their minimum wage job will support a child, are not likely to be as productive as those who live in healthy, stable families.

I let them know that among the states, Iowa ranks 48th in access to family planning services and ranks 39th in the nation for providing funding for family planning.

One of the questions on a form asked how this topic “propels women entrepreneurs into economic, social and political spheres of power worldwide.”

I told them that nearly one-half of all pregnancies in the U.S. are unintended, one of the highest levels in the developed world. Other developed countries entrust qualified teachers with the task of educating their children with age-appropriate, medically correct information about sexuality and contraceptives.

I thought I was doing a good job of staying focused on the issue as it related to business. Then I noticed that a woman in the front row was crying, very quietly. No one could see her except me, and when I finished she had composed herself.

The email I received from her a few days later began, “When I was younger…”

– Christie Vilsack is the Executive Director of The Iowa Initiative to Reduce Unintended Pregnancies