Trump made it legal for employers to deny you birth control coverage for “moral” reasons
Is your birth control covered by health insurance right now? That’s great — as long as your employer (or your parents’ employer) isn’t morally against it.
Donald Trump just rolled back an order from the Obama years that required employers to cover birth control even if they might have moral or religious objections. That means that now, if your or your parents’ employer is religious or morally against contraception, they won’t have to pay for your birth control anymore.
Under the Affordable Care Act, or Obamacare, over 55 million women were given access to free birth control thanks to this mandate.
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But Trump’s people say the Affordable Care Act does not explicitly require coverage of contraceptives. Instead, that coverage was provided by a mandate from Obama — and the mandate is exactly what Trump just rolled back.
During the Obama years, religious schools, colleges, hospitals and charitable organizations, priests and nuns and even some owners of private for-profit companies who objected to some forms of birth control were faced with lawsuits when they tried to get out of paying for employees’ birth control, according to the The New York Times. But now, such organizations will be free to deny coverage to women.
Clearly, this is a move designed to appeal to the Republican party’s conservative Christian base.
“President Trump promised that this administration would ‘lead by example on religious liberty,’ and he is delivering on that promise,” Attorney General Jeff Sessions said.
The order goes into affect immediately, according to the Times. That means as soon as this month, your birth control could skyrocket in cost.
Now, hundreds of thousands of women could lose birth control benefits they currently receive at no cost under the Affordable Care Act. According to the The New York Post, The American Congress of Obstetricians and Gynecologists said this policy could affect the number of unintended pregnancies.
The CDC reports that teen pregnancy rates have dropped to record lows since 2014. This is probably because birth control has been cheaper and more widely available to many teenagers. The rollback of this mandate could undo that progress.
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