Access to birth control is crucial to ensuring women can control their lives, plan their families and, in many cases, manage ongoing medical conditions.
Yet by pushing to let more employers deny insurance coverage for contraceptives, the Trump administration is treating birth control as some kind of novelty, rather than the medical necessity it is for millions of women.
Final rules issued by the federal government this month will let many more employers claim religious or moral exemptions from providing birth-control coverage. And, unlike in many cases before, a third party such as an insurance company will no longer be required to step in and provide that coverage when employers refuse to do so.
To preserve womens access to birth control, the Trump administration should retract these rules, which are set to take effect Jan. 14. If the administration fails to reconsider its approach, Congress should vote to override the new rules.
The Affordable Care Act generally requires employers to cover preventive health care services, which the government says includes birth control for women.
But under the new rules released this month, a religious exemption that was previously available mainly to churches and houses of worship will be opened to nonprofits and for-profit companies as well, said Mara Gandal-Powers, director of birth-control access and senior counsel for the National Womens Law Center.
These new rules mean women may have to once again pay copays for birth control, which can be a financial barrier for many, causing them to lose access to birth-control coverage entirely, Gandal-Powers said.
What this does is make more unintended pregnancies likely across the country, because it reduces access to the preventive care women need to space and plan their families, said Jennifer Allen, CEO of Planned Parenthood Votes Northwest and Hawaii.
While the Trump administration estimates that only 127,000 women will be affected, Gandal-Powers said that is likely an underestimate. We do think it will be hundreds of thousands of women who will be impacted, she said.
A separate proposal by the Trump administration would allow affected women to access Title X family-planning services, intended for low-income people. But this plan is woefully insufficient, given that the program is already underfunded. The Trump administration is already on shaky legal ground with the final birth-control rules, which are substantially similar to interim regulations it released in late 2017. In response to lawsuits filed by California and Pennsylvania, two federal judges already have issued preliminary injunctions blocking the interim rules from being enforced nationwide.
Rather than continuing what promises to be a prolonged legal battle, federal officials should swiftly reverse course.
If they do not, members of Congress should not hesitate to pass legislation protecting womens contraceptive coverage long into the future.
The Seattle Times
