Birth Control/Contraceptives

Call your Senators NOW!

Call 1-888-838-5169 to tell your Senators to oppose the Blunt Amendment because it would eliminate access to no-cost birth control and other critical health care services.

Last week, President Obama announced that he would continue to protect women's access to birth control without co-pays or deductibles regardless of where they work, including at certain religiously-affiliated employers, while accommodating religious institutions' opposition to contraception.

Despite this accommodation, opponents of birth control in Congress are continuing their attacks on the contraceptive coverage requirement and the Affordable Care Act and they're going to vote VERY SOON on the dangerous and harmful Blunt Amendment. Call 1-888-838-5169 now to tell your Senators to reject the Blunt Amendment. 

The Blunt Amendment would, among other things, allow any corporation whose CEO opposes contraception based on his "moral convictions" to deny all coverage of contraception or any other health care service to the company's employees.

We need your help! Call 1-888-838-5169 TODAY to tell your Senators that you support the President's decision on birth control and oppose the Blunt Amendment because it would eliminate your access to no-cost birth control and other critical health care services. 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 »

Another weekly roundup has arrived! After the jump, we have a small collection of stories for you on Super Bowl ads, an MIT admissions project, a new report coming out next week, and details on where you can get the latest on contraceptive coverage. Read more »

I used to think that making a statement on the floor of Congress required showing some respect for the venue in which you are speaking, including refraining from making untrue statements. Yesterday, several members of Congress have proven to me, again, that for some of them this just isn’t the case anymore. When speaking on the House floor today, several members claimed that the Affordable Care Act’s contraceptive coverage rule would require employers to cover pills that cause abortions. This is simply false. The rule requires coverage of all FDA-approved contraceptive methods. What is an FDA-approved contraceptive method? That’s easy enough to find right here on the FDA website. Pills, patch, IUDs, etc. The members of the House are probably conflating emergency contraception, which is an FDA-approved contraceptive method, with abortion. But as my colleague Jill Morrison pointed out last week, it’s not. 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 »

Last February, the Department of Health and Human Services released an interim final rule stating that student health plans would be treated as individual health insurance plans, meaning that they would have to cover the women’s preventive health services. Let’s translate that out of “legal-ese:” the Department will require student health insurance plans (not student health centers) to cover preventive services for women, such as contraception, screening for sexually transmitted infections, and screening for interpersonal and domestic violence, without co-pays or deductibles. Read more »

A few weeks ago we shared the very exciting news that the Obama administration had held strong and we’d secured no-cost birth control for millions of women through the Affordable Care Act. This was a huge and important step for women’s health and something the National Women’s Law Center has been working towards for over a decade.

But, unfortunately, this decision and final rule has not quieted the opposition. Instead, those opposing the rule are continuing to push back and decry this significant advancement. We’ve posted a number of responses to the negative press and quotes, and we’re continuing to fight back by working with our state partners and submitting letters to the editor to newspapers across the country. Read more »

There has been a lot of press on the recent announcement by the Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) that it was finalizing the rule requiring coverage of all FDA-approved contraceptives with no co-pays or deductibles, and a lot of it hasn’t been positive.  Most of the focus has been on the fact that the Administration chose not to expand the exemption for certain religious employers.

Take Michael Gerson’s and E.J. Dionne’s recent op-eds, for example. Both of them admonish President Obama for not expanding the religious exemption to entities like religiously-affiliated hospitals and universities, and Gerson says that the rule covers “abortifacients” which is just wrong. He also concludes that the decision on the final rule means that “war on religion is now formally declared.” The way these two see it, it should have been a no-brainer to expand the exemption. But wait just one minute, is this all the rule is about – religious institutions versus the Administration? Is there anything else that maybe we should be considering when analyzing this rule?

Oh right…. the tremendous health benefits of contraception. Oddly and sadly, these health benefits are blatantly ignored in all of the negative commentary (Dionne tips his hat just a bit by vaguely referring to how the rule protects “women’s rights”). So it got me thinking, maybe they just don’t understand the health benefits. Maybe I should take a moment to explain just how critical contraception is as a preventive health service. So Gerson, Dionne, and all of the others who ignore the real issue at stake, please take notes. Read more »

Opponents of the recent contraceptive coverage announcement by the Department of Health & Human Services are trying to twist this major advance on contraception into a fight about abortion. In the Washington Post, Michael Gerson states that the rule requires Catholic-affiliated organizations to provide insurance coverage for "abortifacients." CNN's Belief Blog claims the new rule "forces employers to cover contraception and abortion." While both advance several faulty arguments, it's time to put to rest the claim about abortion. The rule is directly and explicitly limited to FDA-approved contraception. Read more »

Abortion. [uh-bawr-shuhn]

Contraception. [kon-truh-sep-shuhn]

These are not the same. Yet I’ve repeatedly seen claims that the HHS decision on contraceptive coverage requires religious employers to cover “abortifacients.”

Clearly, those opposed to the preventive services rule know they are on shaky ground when it comes to rallying their troops against contraception. After all, their troops are using the stuff en mass (but hopefully not in Mass). Ninety-eight percent of Catholics have used a form of contraception opposed by the Vatican. The “abortifacients” claim is based on the fact that the preventive services rule requires coverage for emergency contraception. Some still seem to think that EC causes an abortion. It does not. I repeat. It does not. If you don’t believe me, then turn to another source, like the Catholic Health Association. Read more »