New contraception rules outlined by the Trump administration will allow employers to stop covering birth control — with zero government oversight.
The administration announced on Friday that, effective immediately, it was rolling back federal requirements introduced under the Obama administration which require employers to include birth control in their health insurance plans. Under the new rules, employers can simply self-exempt, citing religious or moral objections, and tell their workers that their birth control is no longer part of their health-insurance coverage.
Those employers are not required to tell the government either, according to PBS NewsHour correspondent Lisa Desjardins. They need to notify the insurers, and can send an optional note to the government.
CONFIRMED: New contraception rule allows employers to self-exempt. They send in a form to notify govt. But otherwise, just tell workers.
— Lisa Desjardins (@LisaDNews) October 6, 2017
CORRECTION: The employer CAN notify govt. But that's not required. So they can just tell their insurer and employees. https://t.co/kWhoh9Ej7y
— Lisa Desjardins (@LisaDNews) October 6, 2017
The new rules fulfill a key campaign promise the Trump administration made to social conservatives, who have continually voiced dissent with the Obama-era federal requirement and challenged it in court. House Speaker Paul Ryan (R-WI) said it was a “landmark day for religious liberty” and would ensure that people “can freely live out their religious convictions and moral beliefs.”
But the rules are deeply damaging to women’s reproductive health, and reflect a wider trend of the Trump administration attempting to dismantle women’s access to health care by opposing abortion rights and cutting grants aimed at tackling teen pregnancy.
“They like to talk about these policies in isolation,” Adam Sonfield of the Guttmacher Institute told ThinkProgress’ Amanda Gomez. “They are not just trying to undermine contraceptive coverage. They’ve tried to cut Title IX funding, Planned Parenthood funding… you have to see it as a coordinated campaign.”
The ACLU, along with the Center for Reproductive Rights, Americans United for Separation of Church, and the state of California, have all said they intend to sue the Trump administration for denying birth control to women.
Conservatives have long insisted that the birth control rollbacks are designed to protect the religious liberty of groups who believe providing contraceptives would violate their moral beliefs. However, data provided by the Center for American Progress to Vox in August showed that the majority of the companies that had applied for and received exceptions were for-profit corporations. They included companies that worked in human resources, industrial machinery, and wholesale trade. (ThinkProgress is an editorially independent news site housed within CAP.)
According to Jamila Taylor, a senior fellow at CAP, the rules suggested Trump’s rollbacks “will open up the floodgates for nearly anyone to force women to pay out of pocket or navigate hurdles to obtaining additional cost for contraception… and simply chalk it up to moral opposition.”