Birth Control
Preventive reproductive care — including birth control — is basic health care. This shouldn't be a revolutionary idea, but unfortunately it is to some. And in the past few years, birth control has become increasingly politicized.
FACT: 99% of women between the ages of 15 and 44 who are sexually active have used birth control at some point.
FACT: A majority of Americans (70%) believe insurance companies should cover the full cost of birth control, just as they do for other preventive services.
However, some politicians are choosing to focus on chipping away at access to birth control.
Hobby Lobby and Trump-Era Policies
In a deeply troubling decision, the U.S. Supreme Court ruled in 2014 that some employers who personally believe birth control is wrong have the power to deny legally mandated health care coverage of it for their employees.
The ruling in Burwell v. Hobby Lobby granted bosses at two for-profit companies a religious exemption to the part of the Affordable Care Act (ACA) that covers birth control without copay. In addition to those companies, many other employers have challenged the ACA's birth control mandate so that they, too, can deny the benefit to their employees.
Meanwhile, the Trump-Pence administration tried to make no-copay birth control coverage harder to get through a slew of anti-birth control rules and regulations. The Trump administration also issued a Title X gag rule, which threatens birth control access for 4 million people with low-incomes