Since President-elect Donald Trump wants to repeal the Affordable Care Act (ACA), women will likely lose access to free contraceptives. Many women are rushing to get intra-uterine devices (IUDs), or they are stocking up on their birth control pills.
Health experts say that women may be losing more benefits than just their contraception. Gretchen Borchelt, vice president for reproductive rights and health at the National Women’s Law Center, says:
“Our concern is going back to a world where insurance companies are writing their own rules again, and returning women to those bad old days in health care and losing all the progress we’ve made.”
Women’s preventive services could be axed as well. The ACA has some standards of what every insurance policy should cover. One of these is to provide preventive services for men and women. Yearly checkups are supposed to be free.
For women, the preventive services include:
- Anemia screenings
- Counseling on breastfeeding
- Contraception
- Folic acid supplements for pregnant women
- Gestational diabetes screenings
- Hepatitis B screenings
- Tobacco intervention and counseling
- Urinary tract infection screenings
- And more…
With the new administration, they could potentially change what preventive services women get.
Donald Trump is not a friend towards women. Since he was elected, doctors have seen an increase in patients asking for birth control and IUDs. The IUDs can last longer, so they might last longer than Trump’s presidency.
Trump has also said that women should be punished if they have abortions. The Vice President-elect, Mike Pence, passed a law that required women to pay for burial or cremation for their aborted or miscarried fetuses.
Pence has also said that he wants to help get rid of abortion when Trump was elected. He doesn’t seem to realize that the Vice President doesn’t have the power to overturn court cases or propose legislation to ban it.
Featured image via Twitter
