If you have health insurance, you’ve probably had free or inexpensive birth control available to you for many years. Sadly, that is currently under danger.
According to the New York Times, the Trump administration intends to repeal the law requiring employers to cover birth control as part of their employee health insurance plans. Due to moral or religious objections, this enables businesses to refuse to cover birth control as part of health insurance. According to the Times, the new regulations might be released as soon as this Friday.
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You are impacted by this if you have a vagina. Thanks to the Obamacare requirement, more than 55 million women can currently get birth control without having to pay a co-payment. Additionally, the Times notes that thousands of women may stand to lose this.
Employers or insurers may refuse to provide coverage for contraception under the new regulation “based on its sincerely held religious beliefs” or if it has “moral convictions” against doing so. It basically allows businesses to refuse to cover birth control as a cost-saving measure if they cite morality or religion as the justification. However, this provision is pretty nebulous.
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Jessica Shepherd, M.D., an assistant professor of clinical obstetrics and gynecology and the director of minimally invasive gynecology at the University of Illinois College of Medicine at Chicago, believes that these regulations impede rather than advance women’s health. Concerning the option for employers to deny coverage based on moral or religious principles, she asserts that “these two things in general should not interfere with what you allow your employees access.” “Rather than healthcare with conditions, it should just be healthcare,”
Shepherd points out that the administration has also attempted to cut funding to organizations like Planned Parenthood that offer affordable birth control options to women, making it even more challenging for women to obtain births control that they can afford.
Shepherd calls the Trump administration’s claim that making birth control widely available could encourage “risky sexual behavior” among teenagers and young adults the “most asinine statement I have ever heard.” It encourages greater decision-making accountability and reduces unintended pregnancies, she continues.