Contraception, Pregnancy and Abortion

Women who want to freely have sex but to avoid getting pregnant and then possibly having an abortion may find these two articles interesting:

1. "Got health insurance? Hello, birth control options!"
2. "Access to free birth control reduces abortion rates"

The first article says — with regard to the Affordable Care Act (ACA) that was signed into law by President Barack Obama in 2010, sometimes referred to as "Obamacare" — that "if you have health insurance, your preferred birth control method should now be a covered benefit without any out-of-pocket expenses."

There are a couple of exceptions. Certain health insurance plans were "grandfathered in" by the terms of the ACA, such that they are allowed not to cover birth control as long as they didn't cover it before March 2010 and haven't made "significant changes" to the plan since March 2010. If you think your plan is an outdated one that might have been grandfathered in, you should call your insurance company to ask about its contraception coverage.

The other exception is that "there are special rules for employers or schools with religious objections to providing birth control coverage." Click here to find out more about that.

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The second article tells us that in a controlled scientific study, having access to free birth control lowered abortion rates a lot. If your health insurance pays for birth control at all — as it almost certainly does, according to the first article — it has to cover every dollar you spend on birth control, with no copays or deductibles. So, from your point of view, birth control is free.

The second article adds, "when you walk into the pharmacy to pick up a pack of pills, your receipt should say $0. Same deal when you go to a health care provider to get an IUD: $0." (An IUD is an intrauterine device that prevents pregnancy.) Also, "Plans must cover all FDA-approved birth control methods with no out-of-pocket expense. That includes implants, IUDs, the shot, the pill, the patch, the ring, diaphragms, cervical caps, and sterilization procedures."

That's of particular interest because, says the first article, IUDs and contraceptive implants are more reliable ways of preventing pregnancy than the use of birth control pills is — but if you don't have health insurance that covers them, IUDs and implants can cost you more than $800. That was then, this is now: with health insurance that covers all FDA-approved birth control methods, you can now get an IUD or a contraceptive implant at no out-of-pocket cost to you.