President Donald Trump's Administration is Preparing a Massive Change to Your Birth Control
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President Donald Trump's administration is drafting a new rule to block a requirement for birth control coverage.
Federal officials reportedly want to stop the requirement that forces employers to provide coverage for birth control in their health insurance plans for employees, according to The New York Times.
Danielle DeCourcey
A copy of the May 23 proposed rule obtained by Vox is being reviewed by the Office of Management and Budget.
"This rule is a product of reconsideration of how to exercise that discretion on the part of the administering agencies, in order to better balance the interests in preventive services coverage to the extent imposed through the ACA along with the interests throughout federal law to protect individuals and organizations with religious beliefs and moral convictions," reads the proposed rule.
Basically, the Trump administration wants to allow employers who may have religious objections to birth control the option to avoid covering it in their insurance plans.
People on Twitter had strong reactions to the proposed rule.
On May 4, Trump signed an executive order that asked federal officials to consider "conscience-based objections to the preventive-care mandate,” fulfilling a promise he made on the campaign trail to strengthen religious liberty rights. The same day he met with a a group of nuns and made a statement about his intentions.
“With this executive order we are ending the attacks on your religious liberty,” Trump said to members of the Little Sisters of the Poor.
Right now most employers are required to cover contraceptives in their insurance plans, but houses of worship can be exempt from the requirement if they have religious objections. Religion-associated nonprofits and some corporations cannot receive an exemption but they may be able to receive an "accommodation."
"The accommodation allows these employers to opt out of providing and paying for contraceptive coverage in their plans by either notifying their insurer, third party administrator, or the federal government of their objection," according to KFF's January outline of contraceptive coverage. "The insurers then are responsible for covering the costs of contraception, which assures that their workers and dependents have contraceptive coverage, and relieves the employers of the requirement to pay for it."
The new rule would allow employers to decide whether they will cover birth control in their insurance plans.
About 20 percent of American women paid some money out of pocket before the Obama-era mandate, but with the requirement only 4 percent pay, according to Vox. In a 2015 survey by the Kaiser Family Foundation and The Washington Post 77 percent of women and 64 percent of men said that they support no-cost contraceptive coverage.
ATTN: wrote about the anxiety some women felt concerning their access to birth control after Trump won the election.
Intrauterine Devices (IUDs) can cost from $500 to $1000 without insurance coverage. In the weeks after the 2016 presidential election, Dr. Raegan McDonald-Mosley, the chief medical officer at Planned Parenthood Federation of America, said that the organization was bombarded by concerned women.
"In the first week after the election, Planned Parenthood saw a significant increase in appointments for birth control, with a nearly ten-fold increase in people seeking IUDs—and we continue to see higher than average numbers," McDonald-Mosley told ATTN: in a statement in November 2016. "These spikes illustrate just how important the Affordable Care Act’s birth control benefit has been for women to access the birth control method of their choice."
