Protect Access to Birth Control

A message from CREDO Action:

During the Obama administration, we've seen many attacks on women's rights — and activists have been busy pushing back against threats to women's health like the Stupak amendment.

But thanks to pressure from activists like you, Secretary of Health and Human Services Kathleen Sebelius is poised to make the biggest advancement for women's health in over a decade.

Secretary Sebelius has announced preliminary plans to designate birth control for women as "preventive care," which under the new health care law will make birth control available at no additional cost to all women in the United States with insurance.

Now the Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) is holding a public comment period on this decision and we need to show support for these vital new rules.

Click here to submit a comment to the HHS in support of their decision to make birth control free to women.

We know that the anti-woman forces including the influential United States Conference of Catholic Bishops will be organizing anti-choice activists to submit as many comments as they can in an attempt to roll back this historic advancement for women's health.

Cardinal Daniel DiNardo, a representative of the Conference of Catholic Bishops, responded with fierce resistance to the HHS announcement, saying, "Pregnancy is not a disease, and fertility is not a pathological condition to be suppressed by any means technically possible."¹

We have to show our overwhelming support for these new rules so HHS knows that support for their decision far outweighs the extreme anti-woman forces. Click here to submit a comment to the HHS in support of their decision to make birth control free to women.

Over 70,000 CREDO Action members took action on this fight and petitioned HHS to designate contraceptives as preventive care — and HHS listened. But the fight isn't over yet.

Even on issues as benign and medically accepted as the new HHS rules, anti-women theocrats on the right are up in arms because they literally oppose birth control. And they will not stop their crusade against women's right to reproductive health.

This public comment period is a critical time to take another stand against the anti-choice forces and to ensure that the Obama administration will continue to take the side of women's health.

Show the Obama administration that women's rights are more important than any opposition from the right wing. Let HHS know that protecting women's health was the right decision. Click here to submit a comment to the HHS in support of their decision to make birth control free to women.

Thank you for standing up for women's health.

Ali Rozell, Campaign Manager
CREDO Action from Working Assets

1. "HHS OKs birth control with no co-pay," Sabriya Rice,CNN, 08-01-2011.