A Female Judge Just Blocked Trump's Attempt to Rescind the Birth Control Mandate
For a lot of women—particularly those of child-bearing age—one of the best parts of former President Barack Obama‘s Affordable Care Act is the fact that employers are required to offer free birth control to employees through their health insurance policies. Keeping in mind the high cost of the Pill, IUDs, and other forms of contraception, the news that they would now be totally covered came as a huge breath of fresh air, reducing stress for women worried about how they’d scrape together another $100 for next month’s Pill pack or dissuaded by the cost of longer-term options—even if those ultimately worked better for them. (Reminder: There is no one-size-fits-all option for contraception.)
The one type of employer currently excluded from this mandate are religious organizations. However, President Donald Trump, via the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services, attempted to undo the entire requirement by issuing a change in policy in October—until a female judge on Friday put a temporary stop to it.
Word that Trump would try to undo Obama’s birth control mandate has been floating around since the end of May, when Vox got a leaked document saying that all employers—not just religious organizations—would be able to apply for a religious or moral exemption. Trump administration lawyers say that the change in policy protects “a narrow class of sincere religious and moral objectors from being forced to facilitate practices that conflict with their beliefs.”
Luckily, a federal judge in Pennsylvania stopped Trump’s attempt in its tracks by issuing an injunction on Friday that orders the administration not to enforce the change in policy. Appointed by Obama, the judge, Wendy Beetlestone, wrote in her ruling that Trump’s rules “conjured up a world where a government entity is empowered to impose its own version of morality on each one of us. That cannot be right.”
The downside is that her injunction is only temporary, but the upside is that for now, our free birth control is safe.
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