What You Need to Know About Trump's Birth Control Rules

Last month, voters across the country made clear that they care about reproductive health care. Yet just hours after polls closed, the Trump-Pence administration announced final rules to block access to birth control — a form of health care used by nine out of 10 women of reproductive age.

The rules — which roll back birth control access — are set to be effective on January 14, 2019, but ongoing litigation could prevent them from taking effect. We need to do everything we can to raise awareness about the attack.

What do the birth control rules do?

The administration's rules would gut the part of the Affordable Care Act (ACA) that requires employers to cover birth control in their health insurance plans. Without that requirement, virtually ANY entity that provides health insurance coverage — including businesses, colleges, and universities — could refuse to cover birth control.

Without health insurance, birth control pills typically cost between $15 and $50 per month. That adds up to over $600 per year. An IUD could cost more than $1,100 out-of-pocket.

What will happen when the birth control rules go into effect, and why are they harmful?

The rules roll back access to birth control for the 62 million women who gained access thanks to the Affordable Care Act. Women of color made up the majority of people who gained coverage for birth control without a copay, including 17 million Latinas and 15 million Black women. Altogether, women saved more than $1.4 billion per year in out-of-pocket costs on birth control pills since the birth control benefit went into effect. That’s a savings of more than $3.8 million EVERY DAY.

Without the ACA’s guarantee of insurance coverage for birth control, many women —  especially women of color and young people — won’t be able to afford birth control at all. In fact, before the Affordable Care Act, 57 percent of women ages 18 to 34 said they’d struggled to afford birth control. Forty percent of Black women of reproductive age said they couldn’t afford more than $10 a month for birth control if they had to pay out of pocket.

Didn’t the Trump-Pence administration already let bosses refuse to cover birth control?

If these control rules sounds familiar, it’s because we’ve been here before. The administration first tried to make it easier for employers to refuse to cover birth control a little over a year ago. With your help, we fought back. State attorneys general and advocates sued the administration, and two federal courts stopped the rules from taking effect. But the administration made small tweaks to those rules and is continuing to move forward.

What’s different this time around?

Not much. The final version of the birth control rules are basically identical to last year’s rules. They’re likely to continue to be challenged in court. With your help, we’ll do everything we can to make sure they’re struck down.

_{We need to show the administration and our elected leaders just how MANY of us oppose taking away our access to birth control.}