Health Care & Reproductive Rights

The health care law, the Affordable Care Act, protects women from discriminatory health insurance practices, makes health coverage more affordable and easier to obtain, and improves access to many of the health services women need.  Approximately 17 million women will gain coverage because of the Affordable Care Act. Millions of women are already benefiting from the law, and there are important protections women will gain when the law is fully implemented in 2014.

Although women’s access to abortion care has been under attack for years, the results of the 2010 midterm elections allowed new anti-choice policymakers unprecedented success in their ongoing effort to undermine a woman’s right to an abortion. In 2011, states enacted a record number of new restrictions limiting access to abortion – 92 provisions in 24 states, almost triple the previous record. These include requirements that women undergo medically unnecessary, invasive ultrasounds; bans on abortion earlier in pregnancy than current law allows; onerous mandatory delay requirements; and bans on insurance coverage of abortion. These new obstacles to abortion represent a dangerous overreach into women’s reproductive health care and personal medical decisions.