Employers May Soon Be Able to Deny Birth Control Coverage

Talk about a hard pill to swallow—the Wall Street Journal reported last week that "Federal health officials are expected to finalize a regulation that would allow employers with religious or moral objections to birth control to omit coverage for contraception."

We've heard reports since early May that the current administration had plans to rescind the Obama -instituted mandate that employers include birth control in health insurance plans, courtesy of the New York Times .

On May 4, President Trump issued an executive order demanding that three cabinet departments “address conscience-based objections to the preventive-care mandate" and cited a section of the Affordable Care Act that refers specifically to preventive services for women. This same day, he also hosted the Little Sisters of the Poor in the White House's Rose Garden. Trump told the group, "With this executive order, we are ending the attacks on your religious liberty.”

The Little Sisters, one of many employers with religious-based rejections to the ACA, refused to comply and instead went after a Supreme Court ruling .

The suit was a sort of nonissue given a loophole that allowed employees to bypass their employers. "If an employer notifies the government of its unwillingness to cover contraceptives, that prompts the insurer administering the employer’s health benefits to assume the cost and administration of providing contraceptives, effectively cutting out the employer," explains The Cut .

This new drafted policy change would eliminate this workaround—one that has benefited over 50 million women , according to Democrats in Congress who spoke to the Times.

"Women saved more than $1.4 billion in out-of-pocket costs for birth control in 2013 alone,” Dem. Senator Patty Murray of Washington and 13 other Democratic senators wrote in a letter to Mick Mulvaney, the White House budget director. “Access to affordable preventive services, including contraception, is a critical part of women’s health care .”

The article also reported that researchers found that since the Affordable Care Act increased women's access to contraceptives, "it may have contributed to a decline in unintended pregnancies."

See more: Birth Control 101: What You Need to Know Before the Honeymoon

For that reason and a host of others, Gretchen Borchelt, a vice president of the nonprofit advocacy group, National Women's Law Center, told the Times her organization is preparing counteraction.

Borchelt explained that if the rule is not adequately explained or justified, it could be deemed “arbitrary and capricious,” and thus in violation of federal law. She also made mention of a quieted provision of the ACA that maintains the health secretary shall not issue any rule that “impedes timely access to health care services” or “creates any unreasonable barriers to the ability of individuals to obtain appropriate medical care.”

We're hoping for the best, but for now, we'll just leave this here: 6 essential facts you need to know about going off the pill . Just in case.