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The Affordable Care Act (ACA) has changed access to health coverage for millions of women across the nation, including a provision requiring most private health insurance plans to provide coverage for prescription contraceptives and services.
A new Kaiser Family Foundation report finds that donor governments provided US$1.3 billion in bilateral funding for family planning programs in low- and middle-income countries in 2015, essentially matching 2014 levels in real terms (after accounting for exchange rate fluctuations and inflation).
The Affordable Care Act’s contraceptive coverage provision made access to the full range of contraceptive methods available to millions of women with private insurance at no cost. Despite broad public support, this provision has been challenged by religious employers, with two cases reaching the Supreme Court.
On March 23, the U.S. Supreme Court will hear Zubik v. Burwell, legal challenges brought by nonprofit corporations challenging the Affordable Care Act's contraceptive coverage requirement. The 2014 Hobby Lobby decision established that certain firms with religious beliefs should be relieved of the requirement of paying for contraceptive coverage. In this case, religious nonprofits are objecting to the regulations that the Obama Administration has developed to accommodate their religious objections to birth control, claiming it still burdens their religious beliefs. After the death of Justice Antonin Scalia, this already complicated case has taken on yet an additional question. Given that the Court will be operating with only 8 Justices, what would be the impact of a tie (4-4) decision? To address the legal and policy questions raised by the case, the Kaiser Family Foundation will hold an interactive web briefing exclusively for journalists.
In this post on The Huffington Post, Alina Salganicoff and Laurie Sobel offer a Q&A on “contraceptive-only” plans, an approach mentioned during oral arguments in the U.S. Supreme Court case Zubik v. Burwell. In the Zubik case, a group of religiously affiliated nonprofits with religious objections to providing birth control coverage seek an exemption from the Affordable Care Act's provision requiring most plans to offer such coverage without cost-sharing.
In the latest post in the Policy Insights series, Jen Kates, Josh Michaud, and Allison Valentine examine how rapid emergence of Zika virus in the Americas, and its association with a severe birth defect, impact women as some health officials are calling for women to avoid pregnancy even though they have limited reproductive health access in some of the affected countries. They also examine the role of the U.S. government in addressing Zika and its impact on women in Latin America and the Caribbean.
US Appeals Court Rulings on Lawsuits by Nonprofits Objecting to Contraception Download Source Sobel and Salganicoff. 2015.
This report provides a close examination of reproductive age (18-49) females' (including those who identify as women and other genders) experiences with contraception, insurance coverage, contraceptive preferences, and interactions with the health care system based on an analysis of the 2022 KFF Women's Health Survey, a nationally representative survey of females ages 18-64 in the United States.
In 2021, donor government funding for family planning activities totaled US$1.39 billion, essentially flat compared to the 2020 amount (US$1.41 billion). This report provides an analysis of donor government funding to address family planning in low- and middle-income countries in 2021.
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