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The Guttmacher Report on contraceptives discusses the finances of birth control access. It notes that millions of women rely on health care benefits through work to pay for birth control. This post is an opportunity to discuss recent politics over birth control access. I'm providing a long introduction here but with the encouragement to students to join in this very immediate political conversation about health care.

Traditionally, women have had to pay out of pocket for birth control even if they had health care insurance--one of the factors that raises the costs of health care for women. To respond to this, the Affordable Care Act (the ACA, more popularly known as Obamacare) required that all health insurance programs offer birth control as part of the 'essential services' that individuals need and that excluding birth control was a form of gender inequality in health care.

But in 2020, the US Supreme Court backed the Trump administration's roll-back of this aspect of the ACA. The Supreme Court ruled that a business or institution has the religious freedom to choose to 'exempt' themselves from such requirements.

For example: the University of Notre Dame is a Catholic university that many non-Catholic students attend because of the academic reputation. And the majority of the staff are non-Catholics. Yet Notre Dame could choose to refuse to provide birth control through student health services or require that the insurance plan that is part of employee benefits not include contraceptives.

Discuss! Why do you think these politics of access to birth control remain politicized? What is the impact for users of contraceptives? Consider short- and long-term consequences here. Anyone have any thoughts about how they might respond politically?

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