The Contraceptive Mandate Finally Leads America Out of the Victorian Era

The Affordable Care Act demonstrates an affirmative, proactive step from government for women’s access to reproductive health care, but conservatives are bent on moving backwards.

Contraception should be understood as a fundamental right of American women and a necessary foundation of human security. If that seems controversial, consider this: 99 percent of American women approve of birth control and the vast majority use it over many years of their lives. These women deserve and must continue to demand insurance coverage for the method of their choice, without qualification. That’s why the contraceptive mandate in the Affordable Care Act (ACA) is so important and potentially transformative. For the first time ever, all health insurance plans, whether paid for privately or with public subsidies, are required to cover all FDA approved contraceptives at no additional cost.

Family planning is essential to securing the health and rights of women, but it is also the foundation of sound economic and social policy. Tragically, however, U.S. subsidized family planning programs currently serve just over half of those in need.

The stakes are especially high for poor women, who cannot afford the high costs of the most reliable and desirable methods and experience much higher rates of early and unwanted pregnancy as a result. Single women in poverty head a growing percentage of U.S. households. In “Breaking the Cycle of Poverty: Expanding Access to Family Planning,” a new white paper released today by the Roosevelt Institute, we argue that addressing their needs, and opening up opportunities to them and their children, will require multiple policy interventions, but none can work if women are denied the right and the agency to make, and act on, well-informed decisions about their own bodies.

Decades of social science research demonstrate that access to reliable and affordable family planning methods promotes responsible decision-making and reduces unwanted pregnancy and abortion. It allows women to pursue educational and employment opportunities that strengthen their families and their communities. A majority of women who participated in a recent study by the Guttmacher Institute, for example, report that birth control enables them to support themselves financially, complete their education, and get or keep a job. Other recent studies also show that providing family planning services at no cost results in more effective contraceptive use, decreased rates of unintended pregnancy, and dramatic declines in abortion rates.

Many American conservatives, however, reject these claims. They blame single mothers for America’s rising tide of poverty and inequality, not the other way around. They insist that access to sexual and reproductive health information and services exacerbates social problems by promoting promiscuity and unintended pregnancy, when in fact, the exact opposite is true. They promote abstinence-education and marriage promotion programs that have been tried before and been discredited, because they simply do not work.

This conflict was front and center last week as the U.S. Supreme Court heard 90 riveting minutes of argument in Sebelius v Hobby Lobby Stores, Inc. and Conestoga Wood Specialties Corp. v Sebelius, a pair of cases brought by two privately held corporations owned by Christian conservatives. The owners claim that the ACA violates the religious freedom of employers forced to cover the costs of contraception. Much of the testimony turned on technical questions of whether corporations, as opposed to the individuals who own them, legitimately have rights to assert in this instance, and whether they may impose those rights on employees who don’t share their views. There were also important matters of scientific integrity at stake, with the plaintiffs claiming that Intrauterine Devices (IUDs) and morning-after pills constitute methods of abortion, despite overwhelming medical agreement and numerous reputable scientific studies showing that, like everyday birth control pills, they only act to prevent conception.

All but lost in the court’s conversation were larger concerns about the health and well-being of women and families – and of our society as a whole. The Supreme Court hearing comes in the wake of more than three years of persistent attacks by extreme conservative lawmakers who have already decimated publicly subsidized services in states across the country and left many low-income women without access to basic family planning and to other critical reproductive and maternal health care services.

As legal scholar and policy analyst Dorothy Roberts observed, “when access to health care is denied, it’s the most marginalized women in this country and around the world who suffer the most—women of color, poor and low-wage workers, lesbian and trans women, women with disabilities… And this case has far-reaching consequences for their equal rights. Birth control is good health care, period.”

Today, by government estimates, more than 27 million American women already benefit from the ACA’s contraceptive mandate, and 20 million more will enjoy expanded coverage when the law is fully implemented. Yet even by these optimistic assessments, many low-income women will continue to fall through insurance gaps, partly thanks to a 2012 Supreme Court ruling that enables states to opt-out of Medicaid expansion mandated by the ACA. More than 3.5 million – two-thirds of poor black and single mothers, and more than half of low-wage workers – will be left without insurance in those states.

Conservative opposition to contraception is not new. As we observe in our paper, the U.S. controversy over family planning dates back to Victorian-era laws that first defined contraception as obscene and outlawed its use. Those laws carried the name of Anthony Comstock, an evangelical Christian who led a nearly 50-year crusade to root out sin and rid the country of pornography, contraceptives, and other allegedly “vile” materials that he believed promoted immorality. Sound familiar?

It took nearly a century for the U.S. Supreme Court to reverse course and guarantee American women the right to use contraception under the constitutional doctrine of privacy first enunciated in 1965. The ACA promises us even more. It places an affirmative, positive obligation on government to provide women the resources to realize our rights. The question before us is simple: Do we turn back the clock and allow a new Comstockery to prevail, or do we move ahead into the 21st century by defending the full promise of the Affordable Care Act’s contraceptive mandate?

Read Ellen and Andrea’s paper, “Breaking the Cycle of Poverty: Expanding Access to Family Planning,” here.