Here’s how we protect birth control in the time of Trump

NARAL members speak loud and clear: Trump must get his #HandsOffMyBC

Donald Trump and the anti-choice GOP seem to have made it their personal mission to strip essential healthcare — including birth control and abortion access — from millions of Americans. After they failed time and time again to pass their brutal agenda via traditional legislative channels, they are turning to other methods.

Last month, the Trump administration issued new rules that allow employers to deny their employees access to birth control for essentially any reason. This action severely undermines the Affordable Care Act’s birth control benefit, which saved women over $1.4 billion on the pill alone in just the first year, and was the single greatest advancement in reproductive healthcare in a generation. This policy ensured that millions of women could access affordable birth control, giving them more control over their own lives and their own destinies.

Let’s be clear: this was never about policy, and when the anti-choice GOP undermines our rights and takes away access to basic healthcare, they’re clearly saying that a woman’s health and well-being is not a priority.

The health, rights, and reproductive freedom of women all across America are on the line as the Trump administration and the anti-choice GOP take away our bodily autonomy under the guise of religious and moral beliefs. But NARAL is fighting back, with over 26,500 NARAL members signing petitions demanding the Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) rescind these harmful and discriminatory rules immediately.

These petitions were personally delivered to HHS on the last day it was allowing citizens to submit public comment on Trump’s discriminatory birth control rule. As the deadline passed, NARAL Pro-Choice America joined allies outside HHS to demand the Trump administration keeps its hands off our birth control!

When the Trump administration takes away access to basic healthcare like birth control, and selects anti-choice officials like Alex Azar to lead our nation’s health care department, it is robbing countless women of our dignity, our ability to determine our own futures, and our ability to become equal partners in society.

But there is hope: Everyday Americans and legislators at the state and federal levels see the writing on the wall and are taking steps to make sure every American can access birth control, even when Donald Trump is desperately trying to take it away. Just yesterday, as HHS’ public comment period closed, the DC City Council voted on a measure to codify the ACA’s birth control benefit into local law.

NARAL members attended the rally in support of the law, celebrating DC’s proactive effort to make sure every woman has access to affordable birth control. When states take matters into their own hands, we are able to fight Trump’s dangerous agenda and defend basic human rights for all women.