U.S. curtails birth control, again

The following excerpt is from an editorial in The New York Times.

Only days after surprising the nation by striking down a strict antiabortion law in Louisiana, the Supreme Court under Chief Justice John Roberts reminded Americans once again that it is no friend to reproductive rights, or to the vast majority of women who will use some form of birth control in their lifetime.

In a decision Wednesday, the justices dealt another blow to the birth control mandate under the Affordable Care Act. In the wake of the 7-2 ruling in Little Sisters of the Poor v. Pennsylvania, “between 70,500 and 126,400 women would immediately lose access to no-cost contraceptive services,” Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg noted in her dissent, citing a government estimate.

The Little Sisters of the Poor is an order of Catholic nuns who are religiously opposed to birth control.

They’re also opposed to the ACA’s birth-control mandate, which says that insurance plans sponsored by large employers must include all forms of birth control approved by the Food and Drug Administration at no additional cost.

The litigation on this issue has been continuing for the better part of the past decade. Then the Trump administration, which has consistently sided with anti-abortion activists, came along, vastly expanding the exemptions to the contraception mandate so that any company that isn’t publicly traded can opt out, if it has a religious or a moral objection. States sued to block those regulations, the case made it to the Supreme Court and here we are: The court has upheld the Trump administration’s expanded exemptions to the mandate, on administrative grounds, making it harder for many thousands of American women to get birth control.