Birth Control Refusal

Good news from Arizona! Legislators there listened to women that their health is not up for debate! Politicians were attempting to make it more difficult for Arizona women to access insurance coverage of birth control by stripping away current protections in the state contraceptive equity law. They wanted to allow any employer with a religious objection – even the CEO of a for-profit corporation – to refuse to provide contraceptive coverage to employees. They also wanted to make it easier for those employers to fire a woman if they found out she obtained birth control on her own. Most egregious to the press and public, the bill would have forced women who work for those employers and need contraception for medical reasons to prove it. Read more »

Yesterday, President Obama made an announcement that took the responsibility from certain religiously-affiliated employers and gave it to insurance companies for covering contraception with no co-pays or deductibles. This accommodation will protect women's access to birth control and without extra cost, regardless of where they work. We will closely monitor the implementation of this new rule and work to make sure that all women have access to this essential health benefit.

However, opponents of birth control in Congress are still focused on taking away access to contraception introducing extreme legislation that threatens health across the board. The pieces of legislation range from allowing any employer, regardless of whether it is a religious entity, to deny coverage of contraception to giving employers the right to refuse coverage of any health care service they find religiously or morally objectionable.

They are playing politics with women's health – and it would hurt everyone. Tell your Senators to reject all extreme legislation that would take away women's access to birth control without a co-pay, and other needed health care. Read more »

Last week, together we secured a victory against efforts that would have harmed women's health. After hearing from women and men across the country, Susan G. Komen for the Cure reversed its decision to stop funding breast cancer screenings at Planned Parenthood health clinics. When people come together to protect access to critical women's health services, we're a force to be reckoned with.

But opponents of women's health are at it again. They're attacking the recent Obama administration decision to make contraception widely available to women without co-pays. Help us push back on these attacks on affordable access to birth control — tell the Obama administration you support no-cost birth control by signing the petition on the White House website. Read more »

August brought with it a victory for women’s health. It was announced that all new health insurance plans would be required to coverage preventive services such as contraceptive coverage. However, in not so great news, the mandate included language that would allow religious employers to deny such coverage on the basis of religious or moral beliefs; also known as a “refusal clause.” Today, many religious institutions are pushing to expand the language, creating the opportunity to deny more woman necessary preventive services.

Needless to say I’m having a difficult time grasping what this so-called, “conscience clause” actually means. Call me silly, but it actually seems immoral to deprive a woman of contraception if those pills are necessary for her to maintain her health. It seems quite immoral to make a woman choose between receiving adequate health care coverage and her job. Do we honestly think it’s fair to deny contraceptive coverage to a teacher at a Catholic school or university even though she may not be Catholic herself? Read more »

In 2008 when then Senator Barack Obama was still campaigning for the presidency and there were notions that the Bush administration would offer a parting shot to women’s groups and the reproductive health community, Obama’s take on the proposed regulation to expand religious restrictions was clear –

“We need to restore integrity to our public health programs, not create backdoor efforts to weaken them. I am committed to ensuring that the health and reproductive rights of women are protected.”

But now, here we are three years later, and under President Obama, we are still having a very similar fight. Read more »

As you may have heard, the Catholic Bishops are urging the Obama administration to expand the religious refusal clause concerning contraceptives. This could allow religiously affiliated institutions that are not churches – such as hospitals, universities, Catholic Charities, and others – to refuse to cover birth control without co-pays for their students and employees. That’s even though birth control constitutes “preventive care” under the Affordable Care Act, which is mandatorily covered at no cost by insurance plans. And as we’ve been telling you, denying contraceptive coverage is harmful to women.

In response, today the HERvotes coalition is banding together for another blog carnival to fight the Catholic bishops’ push to expand the religious exemption for employer birth control coverage. After the jump, we have links to some of the posts in today’s blog carnival to get you started reading. While you’re at it, please make sure to take a moment to tell President Obama that all women need affordable birth control. For more information about contraceptive coverage and for more resources and blogs from the NWLC, please visit our contraceptive coverage overview page.