Panel Recommends Free Birth Control; Anti-Abortion Groups Flip Out

<a href="http://www.flickr.com/photos/blmurch/486046904/sizes/m/in/photostream/">blmurch</a>/Flickr

Fight disinformation: Sign up for the free Mother Jones Daily newsletter and follow the news that matters.


The Institute of Medicine recommended on Tuesday that health care insurers cover the cost of birth control under the new federal health care law. This was just one of the findings on preventive health care services for women from the Institute, the branch of the National Academies of Science tasked with providing research and information on medical topics. But like pretty much everything dealing with women’s health these days, this has turned into a debate about abortion.

The Department of Health and Human Services will get to make the ultimate decicion about whether insurers will be required to provide birth control free of charge, but this is a good indication that it will. The new health care law requires insurers to cover preventative health care, and the administration directed the Institute to determine what that should include. This could be a big deal, as many women regularly shell out large amounts for birth control copayments. (I’ve personally paid up to $50 a month in the past, so I’m hardly an impartial party on this particular issue.) But just like the battles over Title X family planning funds in Congress this year, this recommendation has anti-abortion groups riled up. Specifically, they’re concerned that this could lead to Plan B, or the “morning after pill,” being covered by insurers.

I caught this segement on NPR this morning, before the new guidelines were announced, with Jeanne Monahan, director of the Center for Human Dignity at the Family Research Council:

The other problem, says Monahan, is abortion. Specifically, abortion opponents argue that some emergency contraceptives — so called morning-after pills — can cause very early abortions by preventing the implantation of fertilized eggs into a woman’s uterus.

“So those 7 to 10 days before a baby can implant, Plan B can prevent implantation and thereby cause the demise of that baby. So we’d be opposed to those drugs being included because they act as abortifacients.”

Anti-abortion groups believe that this constitutes abortion, even though medical organizations like the National Institutes of Health and the American College of Obstetricians and Gynecologists have been clear that this is factually incorrect; pregnancy does not begin until a fertilized egg is implanted. Plan B is recommended for a number of reasons: in cases of rape or incest or when a condom breaks.

The abortion debate, of course, distracts from the very real reasons that access to birth control is an important issue for women. Half of all pregnancies in the US are unplanned; reproductive rights advocates believe that access to free birth control could be a significant factor in reducing that number. And many women also use birth control for medical reasons other than preventing pregnancy, like controlling hormone imbalances, reducing the severity of menstrual cramps, or dealing with acne.

WE'LL BE BLUNT:

We need to start raising significantly more in donations from our online community of readers, especially from those who read Mother Jones regularly but have never decided to pitch in because you figured others always will. We also need long-time and new donors, everyone, to keep showing up for us.

In "It's Not a Crisis. This Is the New Normal," we explain, as matter-of-factly as we can, what exactly our finances look like, how brutal it is to sustain quality journalism right now, what makes Mother Jones different than most of the news out there, and why support from readers is the only thing that keeps us going. Despite the challenges, we're optimistic we can increase the share of online readers who decide to donate—starting with hitting an ambitious $300,000 goal in just three weeks to make sure we can finish our fiscal year break-even in the coming months.

Please learn more about how Mother Jones works and our 47-year history of doing nonprofit journalism that you don't find elsewhere—and help us do it with a donation if you can. We've already cut expenses and hitting our online goal is critical right now.

payment methods

WE'LL BE BLUNT

We need to start raising significantly more in donations from our online community of readers, especially from those who read Mother Jones regularly but have never decided to pitch in because you figured others always will. We also need long-time and new donors, everyone, to keep showing up for us.

In "It's Not a Crisis. This Is the New Normal," we explain, as matter-of-factly as we can, what exactly our finances look like, how brutal it is to sustain quality journalism right now, what makes Mother Jones different than most of the news out there, and why support from readers is the only thing that keeps us going. Despite the challenges, we're optimistic we can increase the share of online readers who decide to donate—starting with hitting an ambitious $300,000 goal in just three weeks to make sure we can finish our fiscal year break-even in the coming months.

Please learn more about how Mother Jones works and our 47-year history of doing nonprofit journalism that you don't find elsewhere—and help us do it with a donation if you can. We've already cut expenses and hitting our online goal is critical right now.

payment methods

We Recommend

Latest

Sign up for our free newsletter

Subscribe to the Mother Jones Daily to have our top stories delivered directly to your inbox.

Get our award-winning magazine

Save big on a full year of investigations, ideas, and insights.

Subscribe

Support our journalism

Help Mother Jones' reporters dig deep with a tax-deductible donation.

Donate