Surprise, surprise; last Friday, the Trump administration took another step to erase former President Obama's legacy and women's rights. In the name of religious freedom, Trump signed away women's rights to free birth control under their employer's insurance. The federal requirement enacted under the Affordable Care Act to make employers provide free birth control under their company insurance plans has been revoked in an appeal to the religious freedoms of employers. Basically, the government wants to protect the rights of employers to not feel bad about going against their religious values by going against the basic rights of women to have health care.
The biggest misconception in the whole debate is the actual purpose of birth control, though the name may seem self-explanatory. Birth control is not only a contraceptive, but also a medicine used to treat PMS, acne, polycystic ovary syndrome and endometriosis, to name a few. Furthermore, since the enforcement of the contraceptive coverage mandate, abortion rates have reached an all-time low, and women are saving money on healthcare as a whole. The argument against this is that it is unethical to make religious organizations and businesses provide employees with birth control when it goes against the tenets of their religion and makes owners somewhat complicit in "family planning."
However, while I believe that it should be each individual's decision whether they will follow the bases of a certain religion or if they want to do whatever else they want, I think the more telling aspect of devoutness would be having the option to use any legal medical practices available and choosing to personally opt out of things you do not agree with. In the end, the issue is that basic health care rights are being stripped from potentially millions of women employed by public, private and nonprofit institutions.
Consequently, it is inevitable that we'll see an increase in abortions when women who cannot afford their co-pay for birth control have to start paying for it out of pocket. The amount of women having sex is not going to decrease, so this act of disrespect to women's well-being can only be seen as an act of discrimination. It seems the right-wing Republicans have never questioned the ethical consequences of Viagra being medically insured and federally funded because, of course, that is for men. And yet, seems just as unnatural and irreverent as birth control, if not more so. As a college-aged woman in the main demographic of birth control users, I feel it ridiculous that a 71 year-old man can tell me that my sexual health is less important that his.