The Progress/New Jersey Hills
January 27, 2012
Editorial

President Obama’s decision on Jan. 20 to require that insurance providers cover birth control as a preventive health service is great news on several fronts.

The order means that women with health insurance will not be required to make  co-payments for birth control. And with steadily rising co-payments of $15 to $50 a month, birth control is unaffordable to many women.

The directive is included in the president’s Affordable Health Care Act. It requires that most workplace health plans will have to cover birth control at no cost to employees.

Church-affiliated hospitals, universities and social service organizations will have until Aug. 1, 2013, to comply.

The right to choose to become pregnant or not and with whom is a sacrosanct right for all women.  Those presumptuous enough to think they know better should disappear from the scene.

There are many reasons to applaud Obama’s move. The president‘s decision respects the rights of women. Birth control is critical for women’s health and for cutting unwanted pregnancies.

Among other things, birth control can protect women against endometriosis and can reduce the risk of ovarian cancer.

The president’s decision  is also another welcome sign in a series of statements that Obama will no longer cow to political pressure from the right wing.

Advocates of women’s health had worried that the president would not stand up to the pressure from Catholic Bishops.

The U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops, the Catholic healthcare industry and other special interests wanted religious institutions to be allowed to simply opt out of providing birth control.

For most women, birth control is a simple fact of life and as controversial as taking vitamins.

Planned Parenthood cites a survey by Guttmacher which showed that 99 percent of all sexually experienced women and 98 percent of sexually experienced Catholic women will have used birth control at some point in their lives.

But to those on the fringes, birth control is a sin.

The usual suspects on the right have lined up against Obama’s decision. Really, the anti-abortion groups should be the first to stand behind providing greater, more affordable access to birth control. With the right use of birth control, there are fewer unwanted births and fewer pregnancies.