Threats to Birth Control Access

The Center is filing friend of the court briefs in lawsuits challenging the federal contraceptive coverage benefit, brought by employers who want to deny their employees this important benefit.  These cases involve suits brought under the First Amendment to the US Constitution and the Religious Freedom Restoration Act.  These cases will decide whether a boss’s religious beliefs trump women’s health and women’s access to the health care they need.

The Reproductive Justice (RJ) movement places reproductive health and rights within a social justice and human rights framework.  The movement supports the right of individuals to have the children they want, raise the children they have, and plan their families through safe, legal access to abortion and contraception. In order to make these rights a reality, the movement recognizes that RJ will only be achieved when all people have the economic, social, and political power to make healthy decisions about their bodies, sexuality, and reproduction.

Reproductive Justice demands that women be able to access and make informed decisions about their reproductive health care.  Unfortunately, hospitals and pharmacies sometimes use their religious beliefs to justify denying women not only access to but also information about reproductive health care, including contraception, abortion, and in vitro fertilization. However, the religious freedom protections embodied in the First Amendment do not include the right to use religion to discriminate. While individual providers may refuse to provide a service based on personal religious objections, the pharmacies and hospitals that employ them may not discriminate against the women who seek healthcare at their facilities by denying them the appropriate standard of medical care. Such religious discrimination violates a woman’s right to make informed decisions about her health care  and her reproductive freedom.