Post by respect77 on Nov 10, 2018 4:17:07 GMT
Trump Administration’s New Rules Targeting Birth Control and Abortion – Rolling Stone
Trump’s Department of Health and Human Services quietly finalized two rules empowering employers, universities and nonprofits to refuse birth control coverage to women.
A third rule, also announced Wednesday, would require insurers on the Affordable Care Act marketplace to charge women a separate monthly bill for abortion coverage — a change that advocates say would be so prohibitively expensive it could force insurers to stop offering the procedure altogether.
Under the Obama administration, only certain churches and religious organizations were exempt from an ACA provision requiring employers to offer insurance plans with coverage for birth control.
The new rules, set to take effect in January 2019, would make it much easier for any organization to deny coverage — all they have to do is claim they have “sincerely held religious beliefs” or “non-religious moral convictions” against birth control.
The new rules make any coverage, essentially, voluntary: “Entities that object to covering some, but not all, contraceptive items would be exempt with respect to only those methods to which they object.”
In October 2017, a few months after Trump issued an executive order broadening the definition of “religious liberty,” Sessions issued guidance to all federal agencies explaining how they could legally apply the new executive order.
HHS first debuted the birth control rules at that time, last October, but they fumbled the rollout, trying to rush them through without a federally mandated notice and comment period. Multiple lawsuits followed, and judges in two states issued preliminary injunctions blocking the rules. It’s unclear at this point what bearing those cases, both of which are ongoing, will have on the rules finalized Tuesday.
Trump’s Department of Health and Human Services quietly finalized two rules empowering employers, universities and nonprofits to refuse birth control coverage to women.
A third rule, also announced Wednesday, would require insurers on the Affordable Care Act marketplace to charge women a separate monthly bill for abortion coverage — a change that advocates say would be so prohibitively expensive it could force insurers to stop offering the procedure altogether.
Under the Obama administration, only certain churches and religious organizations were exempt from an ACA provision requiring employers to offer insurance plans with coverage for birth control.
The new rules, set to take effect in January 2019, would make it much easier for any organization to deny coverage — all they have to do is claim they have “sincerely held religious beliefs” or “non-religious moral convictions” against birth control.
The new rules make any coverage, essentially, voluntary: “Entities that object to covering some, but not all, contraceptive items would be exempt with respect to only those methods to which they object.”
In October 2017, a few months after Trump issued an executive order broadening the definition of “religious liberty,” Sessions issued guidance to all federal agencies explaining how they could legally apply the new executive order.
HHS first debuted the birth control rules at that time, last October, but they fumbled the rollout, trying to rush them through without a federally mandated notice and comment period. Multiple lawsuits followed, and judges in two states issued preliminary injunctions blocking the rules. It’s unclear at this point what bearing those cases, both of which are ongoing, will have on the rules finalized Tuesday.
www.rollingstone.com/politics/politics-news/trump-birth-control-abortion-753010/
This is clearly Trump's womanizing, amoral ass catering to the religious right.
But they are taking it a step further than before. So it is not just about abortion any more but birth control altogether. Funny because religious nut jobs have been fighting against abortion under the pretext that it's "murder". So why is pre-conception birth control is on the menu too, now?
It is clear that it is not about Biblical principles. The Bible doesn't actually address the issue of abortion. The way the religious right prioritizes it you would think it is some important topic in the Bible, but it is not at all. It does not even mention it! The few verses that they try to use to support this aggressive abortion policy are taken out of their context by them, but in reality those situations aren't about abortion. Eg. the story of the pregnant woman in the Old Testament who got pushed by two fighting men and lost her baby. That's not abortion! That's causing an accident which causes a woman to lose a baby that she did not want to lose. The Bible does not mention abortion at all. The madness that religious nut jobs make of the issue is nothing but men's ages old desire to control women under the pretext of religion. Birth control made it possible for women to have control of their body and this their life and be independent from men. They can have jobs, their own earnings thanks to birth control instead of being some man's baby making machine at home, being dependent on him and having to put up any shit he subjects her to. Women can get rid of that with birth control and THAT's what these religious nutjobs are panicking about. It's all about control.
Funny that meanwhile they shit on principles that the Bible actually does prioritize. Like mercy, compassion, helping the poor etc. And while they keep going on about how abortion is murder, they don't care about murder that much once that baby comes out of a mother's womb. See all the wars Bush (a hero of the religious right) started under false pretexts etc. How many people died unneccessarily in those wars? But they rationalize that. They also rationalize things like evangelicals going to Africa and trying to have countries like Uganda introduce the death penalty for homosexuality. It failed - so far - but some evengelicals did want that. Instead they are "just" putting gays in jail now. And wage aggressivepropaganda against them so that their safety is compromised. But they care sooooo much for unborn babies. Yeah, right. It's just about men wanting to have control on women.