Photo by Reproductive Health Supplies Coalition The Biden-Harris administration’s proposed rule to expand access to affordable contraception under the Affordable Care Act (ACA) is a timely and essential move, especially in the current political landscape where reproductive rights have been systematically eroded. This proposal would provide over-the-counter birth control without any cost sharing for women with […]

The post Expanding Birth Control Access as the New Front in Reproductive Freedom appeared first on Feminist Majority Foundation.

The tales of New York City's rats are legendary. NY Rats are big and smart, and they have lots of babies. The city has a rat czar and recently held a rat summit to discuss the issue. Mayor Eric Adams was undoubtedly happy to talk about the rat problem rather than his own issues. — Read the rest

The post New York feeding rats tasty birth control appeared first on Boing Boing.

A researcher who underwent dozens of brain scans discovered that the volume of her cerebral cortex was 1 per cent lower when she took hormonal contraceptives

A researcher who underwent dozens of brain scans discovered that the volume of her cerebral cortex was 1 per cent lower when she took hormonal contraceptives

The Trump administration is considering a broad exemption to Obamacare's mandate on contraceptive coverage, according to a leaked draft of the proposed rule published by Vox on Wednesday.

Since 2011, the Obamacare provision has required that most employers provide insurance that covers birth control, without any cost to the patient. The rule has been the target of a number of lawsuits by religious employers who felt that the requirement violated their religious beliefs. Showing sensitivity to such concerns, in 2014 the Supreme Court ruled in Burwell v. Hobby Lobby that some religious employers could opt out of the coverage. But the court required them to file paperwork indicating their objection, in turn triggering separate contraceptive coverage for employees provided directly by the insurance company. That ruling, though, didn't settle the issue for religious groups. In a follow-up 2016 Supreme Court case, Zubik v. Burwell, a number of religious organizations said that even this accommodation required them to violate their beliefs, as the paperwork made them complicit in providing birth control coverage. The Supreme Court sent the case down to the lower courts, where it has still not been resolved.

Now, the Trump administration seems ready to extend the birth control exemption beyond just religious employers. According to the leaked draft, dated May 23, the new rule would allow virtually any organization to opt out of the mandate if they feel contraception coverage violates "their religious beliefs and moral convictions."

"This rule would mean women across the country could be denied insurance coverage for birth control on a whim from their employer or university," said Dana Singiser, vice president for public policy and government relations of Planned Parenthood Federation of America, in a statement. "It would expand the Supreme Court’s Hobby Lobby ruling to allow any employer—including huge, publicly traded companies—to deny birth control coverage to their employees. Think about it: Under this rule, bosses will be able to impose their personal beliefs on their female employees' private medical decisions."

What's more, this draft doesn't require employers opting out of the mandate to notify the government they are doing so; they're only required to notify employees of a change in their insurance plans. Insurance companies could also themselves refuse to cover contraception if it violates their religious or moral beliefs.

This appears to provide an even broader exemption than what team Trump has previously signaled it would enact. Throughout the campaign, Trump assured religious leaders their organizations would not have to comply with the contraception mandate: "I will make absolutely certain religious orders like the Little Sisters of the Poor are not bullied by the federal government because of their religious beliefs," he wrote in a letter to Catholic leaders last year, referring to the order of nuns that were party to the Zubik Supreme Court case. And on May 4, Trump, flanked by the Little Sisters of the Poor, signed an executive order about religious liberty, which encourages several agencies to address religious employers' objections to Obamacare's preventive care requirements, including contraception.

It is unclear what changes may have been made to this draft since May 23, but what is clear is that the rule is in an advanced stage of the process; the Office of Management and Budget announced that it is currently reviewing it, the penultimate step before the rule is enacted via posting in the Federal Register.

You can read the full draft, obtained by Vox, below:

The Trump administration's argument for letting lots of employers opt out of covering birth control is…not exactly bulletproof.

Yesterday, Vox reported that the Trump administration is considering a broad exemption to Obamacare's mandate on contraceptive coverage, according to a leaked draft of the proposed rule. If passed, the rule would allow virtually any employer, not just a religious one, to remove birth control coverage from its insurance plan if contraception violates the organization's religious beliefs or "moral convictions"—a broad and murky standard.

But, in a curious twist, part of the Trump administration's justification for the move hinges on the existence of hundreds of Planned Parenthood clinics, many of which the White House is actively trying to close by "defunding" Planned Parenthood.

As the draft text explains, the administration believes the past rationale for Obamacare's contraception mandate is insufficient. The document lists several reasons why this is the case. Here's one of them:

"There are multiple Federal, state, and local programs that provide free or subsidized contraceptives for low-income women, including Medicaid (with a 90% Federal match for family planning services), Title X, health center grants, and Temporary Assistance for Needy Families. According to the Guttmacher Institute, government-subsidized family planning services are provided at 8,409 health centers overall. Various state programs supplement Federal programs, and 28 states have their own mandates of contraceptive coverage as a matter of state law. For example, the Title X program, administered by the HHS Office of Population Affairs (OPA), provides voluntary family planning information and services for clients based on their ability to pay.

...

"The availability of such programs to serve the most at-risk women identified by IOM [Institute of Medicine, now known as the National Academy of Medicine] diminishes the Government's interest in applying the Mandate to objecting employers."

The implication here is that since there are already programs like Medicaid and Title X to help low-income women afford contraception, the requirement that most employers provide no-cost birth control is less pressing.

But there are a couple of glaring contradictions here: First of all, of the 8,409 health centers that provide Medicaid and Title X family planning services, as cited in the rule, 817 of them are run by Planned Parenthood—the very group that Congress and the administration are trying to exclude from using Title X and Medicaid funds to provide health care.

Trump has already signed a bill into law allowing states to exclude Planned Parenthood and other providers who offer abortions from receiving Title X family planning funding—never mind that Title X funding is used exclusively for nonabortion services. Beyond that, there are several more proposals moving through government—including in the House's American Health Care Act and in the Trump budget proposal—to withhold Medicaid and other federal dollars, including Title X, specifically from Planned Parenthood.

The problem with the White House's logic boils down to this: As the nation's largest provider of federal Title X-funded care, in 2015 Planned Parenthood centers served more than 40 percent of women nationwide using Title X-funded family planning care—a whopping 1.58 million patients. But if Planned Parenthood can no longer receive a single federal dollar to provide contraception and other family planning care—an oft-repeated goal of the Trump administration—then these nearly 1.6 million low-income patients will suddenly lose their family planning care. And now their employers may not cover that care either.

Nuns with the Little Sisters of The Poor, including Sister Celestine, left, and Sister Jeanne Veronique, center, rally outside the Supreme Court in Washington on March 23, 2016.; Credit: Jacquelyn Martin/AP

The birth-control wars return to the Supreme Court Wednesday, and it is likely that the five-justice conservative majority will make it more difficult for women to get birth control if they work for religiously affiliated institutions like hospitals, charities and universities.

At issue in the case is a Trump administration rule that significantly cuts back on access to birth control under the Affordable Care Act. Obamacare, the massive overhaul of the health care system, sought to equalize preventive health care coverage for women and men by requiring employers to include free birth control in their health care plans.

Listen to the arguments live beginning at 10 a.m. ET.

Houses of worship like churches and synagogues were automatically exempted from the provision, but religiously affiliated nonprofits like universities, charities and hospitals were not. Such organizations employ millions of people, many of whom want access to birth control for themselves and their family members. But many of these institutions say they have a religious objection to providing birth control for employees.

For these nonprofits, the Obama administration enacted rules providing a work-around to accommodate employers' religious objections. The workaround was that an employer was to notify the government, or the insurance company, or the plan administrator, that, for religious reasons, it would not be providing birth-control coverage to its employees. Then, the insurance company could provide free birth-control options to individual employees separately from the employer's plan.

But some religiously affiliated groups still objected, saying the work-around was not good enough, and sued. They contended that signing an opt-out form amounted to authorizing the use of their plan for birth control. Among those objectors was the Little Sisters of the Poor, an order of Catholic nuns that runs homes for the elderly poor.

The Supreme Court punted in 2016

The Little Sisters sued, and their case first reached the Supreme Court in 2016. At the time, Sister Constance Viet explained why she refused to sign any opt-out form, saying that "the religious burden is what that signifies and the fact that the government would ... be inserting services that we object into our plan. And it would still carry our name."

Back then, when the Little Sisters' case got to the Supreme Court, the justices basically punted, telling the government and the sisters to work together to try to reach a compromise that would still provide "seamless birth control" coverage for employees who want it, without burdening the Sisters' religious beliefs. Although the Little Sisters did eventually get relief from the lower courts, the fight over the accommodations rules continued right up to the end of the Obama administration.

But when President Trump came into office, the administration issued new rules that would give broad exemptions to nonprofits and some for-profit companies that have objections to providing birth-control coverage for their employees. And the new rules expanded the category of employers who would be exempt from the birth-control mandate to include not just those with religious objections, but those with moral objections, too.

New rules

Those new rules, currently blocked by lower courts, are what is at issue Wednesday in the Supreme Court.

"Many states are suing and none of them can find a single actual woman who claims she's been harmed," says Mark Reinezi, president of the Becket Fund for Religious Liberty, which is defending the Trump rules against challenges brought by Pennsylvania and other states.

And, he adds, "there are many other ways to provide contraceptive coverage to people if they happen to work for religious objectors."

Rienzi says that employees who work for birth-control objectors can get coverage from their spouse's insurance plan, or by switching to a different insurance plan on an Obamacare exchange. And he says that birth control is also available under a program known as Title X, which gives money to state and local governments to provide health care for women.

But Brigitte Amiri, the deputy director the of ACLU's Reproductive Freedom project, says the idea that Title X could make up for the lost coverage is "a joke." Amiri notes that the Title X program has been underfunded for years, and the Trump administration has issued new regulations that in her words "decimated the program."

According to Amiri, "the Trump administration and Vice President [Mike] Pence have long wanted to ... take away coverage for contraception. They want to block access to birth control. They want to block access to abortion ... so this is all part and parcel of the overall attack on access to reproductive health care."

Potential consequences

She maintains that if the expanded Trump rules are upheld for religious objectors, hundreds of thousands of women across the country will lose their contraceptive coverage. Ultimately, Amiri says, there just is no way to maintain birth-control coverage for employees who work for religiously affiliated institutions unless that employer, as she puts it, is willing to "raise their hand" to opt out.

A break in birth-control coverage that big could have serious consequences, say say birth-control advocates. They note that the National Academy of Medicine, a health policy nonprofit, recommended the original rules because birth control is prescribed not just to avoid pregnancy but also to treat various female medical conditions. In fact, it is the most frequently taken drug for women ages 15-60. And it is expensive, $30 a month and more for pills, and as much as $1,000 for buying and having an IUD inserted.

Birth-control advocates say that's the very reason that a broad requirement to cover birth control in insurance was included in Obamacare. They say the new Trump rule improperly undermines that mandate.

But selling that argument to the Supreme Court will be hard. When the court last considered this issue in 2016, its makeup was far less conservative than it is now. Since then, two Trump appointees have been added to the court. And both of those appointees — Neil Gorsuch and Brett Kavanaugh — have already indicated strong support for the notion that religious rights may often trump other rights.

This content is from Southern California Public Radio. View the original story at SCPR.org.

Birth control pills in 1976 in New York. The birth control pill was approved by the FDA 60 years ago this week.; Credit: /Bettmann/Getty Images

Updated at 9:44 a.m. ET

As a young woman growing up in a poor farming community in Virginia in the 1940 and '50s, with little information about sex or contraception, sexuality was a frightening thing for Carole Cato and her female friends.

"We lived in constant fear, I mean all of us," she said. "It was like a tightrope. always wondering, is this going to be the time [I get pregnant]?"

Cato, 78, now lives in Columbia, S.C. She grew up in the years before the birth control pill was approved by the U.S. Food and Drug Administration, on May 9, 1960. She said teenage girls in her community were told very little about how their bodies worked.

"I was very fortunate; I did not get pregnant, but a lot of my friends did. And of course, they just got married and went into their little farmhouses," she said. "But I just felt I just had to get out."

At 23, Cato married a widower who already had seven children. They decided seven was enough.

By that time, Cato said, the pill allowed the couple to avoid having more babies — and she eventually was able to go on to college.

"It was just like going from night to day, as far as the freedom of it," Cato said. "And to know that I had control, that I had choice, that I controlled my body. It gave me a whole new lease on life."

Loretta Ross, an activist and visiting women's studies professor at Smith College, was among the first generation of young women to have access to the birth control pill throughout their reproductive years.

Ross, now 66, said by the time she came of age around 1970, the pill was giving young women more control over their fertility than previous generations had enjoyed.

"We could talk about having sex – not without consequences, because there were still STDS ... but at the same time, with more freedom than our foremothers had," Ross said. "So it changed the world."

For all it's done for women, Ross said that the pill has a complex and controversial history; it was first tested on low-income women in Puerto Rico. Ross said the pill also has limitations; she'd like to see it made available over the counter, as it is in some countries – not to mention, a pill for men.

When the pill was approved in 1960, women had few relatively few contraceptive options, and the pill offered more reliability and convenience than methods like condoms or diaphragms, said Dr. Eve Espey, chair of the Department of Ob/Gyn and Family Planning at the University of New Mexico.

"There was a huge, pent-up desire for a truly effective form of contraception, which had been lacking up to that point," Espey said.

By 1965, she said, 40% of young married women were on the pill.

For Pat Fishback, now 80 and living in Richmond, Va., the newly-available pill allowed her to delay having children in her early 20s until she'd been married for a couple of years.

"It also made having children a positive experience," Fishback said. "Because we had actually, emotionally and intellectually, gotten to the point where we really desired to have children."

It took a bit longer for unmarried women to gain widespread access to the pill and other forms of contraception: Linda Gordon, 80, a historian at New York University, remembers the stigma around single women and contraception at the time.

"When I was in college, a number of women had a wedding ring – a gold ring –that we would pass around and use when we wanted to go see a doctor to get fitted for a diaphragm," Gordon said. "In other words, there were people finding their way to do that, even then."

The pill also gave rise to a variety of other forms of hormonal contraception, many of which are popular today, Gordon said. According to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, nearly 13% of American women of reproductive age use the pill — making it the second most popular form of contraception, after female sterilization.

Gordon said that 60 years after the pill's approval, contraception remains a contentious political issue.

Just this week, the U.S. Supreme Court heard arguments in a case involving the birth control mandate in the Affordable Care Act. A decision on whether some institutions with religious or moral objections can deny contraceptive coverage to their employees is expected in the months to come.

This content is from Southern California Public Radio. View the original story at SCPR.org.

Keeping sperm from being ejaculated may provide the key to creating a birth control drug for men.

Updated at 9:44 a.m. ET As a young woman growing up in a poor farming community in Virginia in the 1940 and '50s, with little information about sex or contraception, sexuality was a frightening thing for Carole Cato and her female friends. "We lived in constant fear, I mean all of us," she said. "It was like a tightrope. always wondering, is this going to be the time [I get pregnant]?" Cato, 78, now lives in Columbia, S.C. She grew up in the years before the birth control pill was approved by the U.S. Food and Drug Administration, on May 9, 1960. She said teenage girls in her community were told very little about how their bodies worked. "I was very fortunate; I did not get pregnant, but a lot of my friends did. And of course, they just got married and went into their little farmhouses," she said. "But I just felt I just had to get out." At 23, Cato married a widower who already had seven children. They decided seven was enough. By that time, Cato said, the pill allowed the couple to

Updated at 9:44 a.m. ET As a young woman growing up in a poor farming community in Virginia in the 1940 and '50s, with little information about sex or contraception, sexuality was a frightening thing for Carole Cato and her female friends. "We lived in constant fear, I mean all of us," she said. "It was like a tightrope. always wondering, is this going to be the time [I get pregnant]?" Cato, 78, now lives in Columbia, S.C. She grew up in the years before the birth control pill was approved by the U.S. Food and Drug Administration, on May 9, 1960. She said teenage girls in her community were told very little about how their bodies worked. "I was very fortunate; I did not get pregnant, but a lot of my friends did. And of course, they just got married and went into their little farmhouses," she said. "But I just felt I just had to get out." At 23, Cato married a widower who already had seven children. They decided seven was enough. By that time, Cato said, the pill allowed the couple to

Updated at 9:44 a.m. ET As a young woman growing up in a poor farming community in Virginia in the 1940 and '50s, with little information about sex or contraception, sexuality was a frightening thing for Carole Cato and her female friends. "We lived in constant fear, I mean all of us," she said. "It was like a tightrope. always wondering, is this going to be the time [I get pregnant]?" Cato, 78, now lives in Columbia, S.C. She grew up in the years before the birth control pill was approved by the U.S. Food and Drug Administration, on May 9, 1960. She said teenage girls in her community were told very little about how their bodies worked. "I was very fortunate; I did not get pregnant, but a lot of my friends did. And of course, they just got married and went into their little farmhouses," she said. "But I just felt I just had to get out." At 23, Cato married a widower who already had seven children. They decided seven was enough. By that time, Cato said, the pill allowed the couple to

Updated at 9:44 a.m. ET As a young woman growing up in a poor farming community in Virginia in the 1940 and '50s, with little information about sex or contraception, sexuality was a frightening thing for Carole Cato and her female friends. "We lived in constant fear, I mean all of us," she said. "It was like a tightrope. always wondering, is this going to be the time [I get pregnant]?" Cato, 78, now lives in Columbia, S.C. She grew up in the years before the birth control pill was approved by the U.S. Food and Drug Administration, on May 9, 1960. She said teenage girls in her community were told very little about how their bodies worked. "I was very fortunate; I did not get pregnant, but a lot of my friends did. And of course, they just got married and went into their little farmhouses," she said. "But I just felt I just had to get out." At 23, Cato married a widower who already had seven children. They decided seven was enough. By that time, Cato said, the pill allowed the couple to

Updated at 9:44 a.m. ET As a young woman growing up in a poor farming community in Virginia in the 1940 and '50s, with little information about sex or contraception, sexuality was a frightening thing for Carole Cato and her female friends. "We lived in constant fear, I mean all of us," she said. "It was like a tightrope. always wondering, is this going to be the time [I get pregnant]?" Cato, 78, now lives in Columbia, S.C. She grew up in the years before the birth control pill was approved by the U.S. Food and Drug Administration, on May 9, 1960. She said teenage girls in her community were told very little about how their bodies worked. "I was very fortunate; I did not get pregnant, but a lot of my friends did. And of course, they just got married and went into their little farmhouses," she said. "But I just felt I just had to get out." At 23, Cato married a widower who already had seven children. They decided seven was enough. By that time, Cato said, the pill allowed the couple to

Updated at 9:44 a.m. ET As a young woman growing up in a poor farming community in Virginia in the 1940 and '50s, with little information about sex or contraception, sexuality was a frightening thing for Carole Cato and her female friends. "We lived in constant fear, I mean all of us," she said. "It was like a tightrope. always wondering, is this going to be the time [I get pregnant]?" Cato, 78, now lives in Columbia, S.C. She grew up in the years before the birth control pill was approved by the U.S. Food and Drug Administration, on May 9, 1960. She said teenage girls in her community were told very little about how their bodies worked. "I was very fortunate; I did not get pregnant, but a lot of my friends did. And of course, they just got married and went into their little farmhouses," she said. "But I just felt I just had to get out." At 23, Cato married a widower who already had seven children. They decided seven was enough. By that time, Cato said, the pill allowed the couple to

Updated at 9:44 a.m. ET As a young woman growing up in a poor farming community in Virginia in the 1940 and '50s, with little information about sex or contraception, sexuality was a frightening thing for Carole Cato and her female friends. "We lived in constant fear, I mean all of us," she said. "It was like a tightrope. always wondering, is this going to be the time [I get pregnant]?" Cato, 78, now lives in Columbia, S.C. She grew up in the years before the birth control pill was approved by the U.S. Food and Drug Administration, on May 9, 1960. She said teenage girls in her community were told very little about how their bodies worked. "I was very fortunate; I did not get pregnant, but a lot of my friends did. And of course, they just got married and went into their little farmhouses," she said. "But I just felt I just had to get out." At 23, Cato married a widower who already had seven children. They decided seven was enough. By that time, Cato said, the pill allowed the couple to

Before the pill was approved by the FDA on May 9, 1960, there were few contraceptive options available to young women. It revolutionized family planning and the sex lives of millions of Americans.

Before the pill was approved by the FDA on May 9, 1960, there were few contraceptive options available to young women. It revolutionized family planning and the sex lives of millions of Americans.

Congress decided that all new health insurance policies should cover preventive care. The ability to deny one type -- birth control for women -- on religious grounds should be a rare exception.

Title: Birth Control Options (Types and Side Effects)
Category: Diseases and Conditions
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Title: Birth Control Pill vs. Shot (Depo-Provera): Similarities and Differences
Category: Diseases and Conditions
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Title: Birth Control Pills (List of Oral Contraceptives and Side Effects)
Category: Medications
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Before the pill was approved by the FDA on May 9, 1960, there were few contraceptive options available to young women. It revolutionized family planning and the sex lives of millions of Americans.

Excessive population growth presents an immediate environmental danger greater than climate change.

The left-right duo agree birth control pills should be available over the counter and Cruz proposed that they collaborate. Republicans last proposed it in 2015; Senate Democrats blocked it

Hailey Bieber doesn't often share details from her personal life. But in the new issue of People, the 23-year-old Vogue cover girl did just that where she admits she has been on birth control for two years.

Birth control pills are considered a safe and effective method to prevent pregnancy. They are about 99% effective when you take them the right way, and if you don't, the chances of getting pregnant goes up to 9%. This article will

New York, NY : Oxford University Press, 2019.