Share Your Story: What does birth control without co-pays mean for you?
Has cost ever kept you from using the method of birth control that’s best for you? Has it forced you to make tough choices, like going without birth control or even delaying paying a bill so you can afford it?
Thanks to the health care law, new insurance plans are required to cover birth control and other women’s preventive health services with no co-payments or deductibles at the start of their next plan year. As more health plans come under the law’s reach, more and more women will be able to keep their wallets closed when they pick up their birth control.
Tell us — what does it mean to you that you will soon get birth control with no co-pays or deductibles?
Please note: The views expressed in the stories below are those of the authors themselves and do not necessarily reflect the opinions of the National Women's Law Center. All statements of fact in these stories have been provided by the individual authors, and the National Women's Law Center cannot and does not vouch for their accuracy. The Center will compile the stories and may use them, in whole or in part, in our advocacy efforts.
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Your Stories
John Kramer
Marshfield, Massachusetts,
I am a conservative Republican and I am for less government. I support a woman's right to have an abortion. I think insurance companies should provide coverage to women seeking abortions. I also think insurance companies should cover birth control. There could be some breakthroughs for aborted fetuses to cure so many kinds of disease for people young and old. I support school choice programs for parents. I support peoples' rights to bear arms. I am oppossed to censorship. I support legalize prostitution. I am a real peoples' rights person.
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Tania Morse
Fontana, CA,
I currently do not pay for my birth control, as I am on Medicaid. However, when I am able to afford my own insurance, it will be quite a relief that I will not have the extra burden of paying a copay for it. I use birth control as a means of regulating my periods. I have cysts in both ovaries, and they cause my periods to be highly irregular and extremely heavy. Being on birth control means I can get on with my life without having to have one week per month that is on hold.
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Melinda Griego
Santa Fe, New Mexico,
Freedom from spending money on a necessity that should be shared by my husband/boyfriend. I love my children, but if I was constantly pregnant or worrying about birth control or the lack of money for birth control, or another mouth to feed, I would not be able to spend quality time with them, and now I can spend the money I used to pay the birth control, or a pregnancy that was not planned, on things my children will need. I also thank Mr. Hablinski for his support, I hope there are other men out there that feel the same way that you do. Taking care of women and their health is important, since women take care of most everyone else.
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Beth Fisher
, Colorado, Medical Technologist
I am now post menopausal, but this issue brings back the memories of coming of age in New York State. It was illegal to get birth control unless you were married, regardless of your age. The exception was for control of menstrual problems. I was terrified of becoming pregnant, so I did scrimp on things to make sure I had my pills. I have fought this fight once, and I thought I had it won. Now a group of people with no common sense or humanity want to make sure that women are back in the tenth century, when we were in the same class with the family cow. Perhaps it is a comfort to them to be so very sure that they are right and have all the answers for everyone else that theycan insist on dictating the most intimate decisions a women can make. May their chickens come home to roost on them.
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Shirley
Melbourne, Florida, Teacher
As happy as I am for other women who will benefit from this, I am still without healthcare, birth control, etc......... I sincerely hope that we go back to Obama's original plan of free health care for everyone and drop the middle man insurance companies which the rich Republicans are shoving down our throats. This new law means nothing to me. I am a former history professor who is currently out of work. Thank you for this forum.
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Angela
, NY,
Birth control without co-pays means everything to me - it is a pro-choice and pro-life necessity. With more access to oral contraception, more women will be able to prevent unwanted pregnancies that lead to the hight rates of abortion, as well as the high rates of children placed in foster care, in this country. We are saving lives by given women the right to own their wombs.
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Lisa Ann Frisone
Cliffside Park, NJ, Part Time Publishing / Unemployed Professional Actress
I am happy for the women that will benefit from this. However, I'd like to bring your attention to the fact that there is a whole segment of women who are under employed, living day to day without health insurance of any kind. Many of us have a real need for access to health insurance and healthcare as our mothers, grandmothers, aunts and other relatives have had breast, ovarian and other female related health concerns that put us in high risk categories. We are college educated and working hard to make ends meet. Our employers don't provide health insurance and we don't earn enough money to buy a policy of our own that actually provides the coverage we need. We also often make too much money to qualify for government assistance and free/discounted clinics are also limited in the service they may be able to offer us. Is there anyone concerned about us, or are we forgotten, casualties of The War on Women?
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Rosemary Diehl
West Palm Beach, Florida, sales
Blessedly I no longer have to worry about birth control. In the days that I did, I paid for it before I paid for my car payment. I now volunteer for a fund that helps to pay for abortions for women who want or need it.. For an extented time I answered the phone for our fund. I cannot tell you how many times women told me about the way they had been using birth control and were no longer able to do so due to price. The cost of an abortion is essentually the same price as birth control for a year. Thing being that they can recieve funding though NAF and local channels for an abortion. Wouldn't we rather prevent than abort? I know my fund would.
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Rosemary Diehl
West Palm Beach, Florida, sales
Blessedly I no longer have to worry about birth control. In the days that I did, I paid for it before I paid for my car payment. I now volunteer for a fund that helps to pay for abortions for women who want or need it.. For an extented time I answered the phone for our fund. I cannot tell you how many times women told me about the way they had been using birth control and were no longer able to do so due to price. The cost of an abortion is essentually the same price as birth control for a year. Thing being that they can recieve funding though NAF and local channels for an abortion. Wouldn't we rather prevent than abort? I know my fund would.
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lois schreur
, nebraska,
one of our college students had to drop out of school after she and her husband ended up with a pregnancy and baby because they did not have the money for birth control. birth control access should not be an issue, EVER!
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