The Trump administration’s policies may make abortion—a procedure it is trying to curb—even more common.
Speaking at Recode’s Code Conference in Rancho Palos Verdes, California, on Thursday, Planned Parenthood president Cecile Richards argued that cutting funding to the women’s health non-profit, as well as making it more difficult to access to contraception, will limit women’s choices and cause abortion rates go up as a result.
“It’s is a very scary time” to be a woman, Richards said. “A group of men are now trying to plot our future in the U.S. Senate.”
This week, Vox reported that the White House has drafted a revision of the government’s contraception coverage mandate that could deny birth control to thousands of women who now have access to it at no cost.
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More than 20% of U.S. women of childbearing age had to pay money out of pocket for oral contraceptives prior to the Obamacare mandate, a number that shrunk to less than 4% after the Affordable Care Act mandate. With the new rule, which expands the number of employers and insurers that qualify for exemptions by claiming a moral or religious objection, that number could go back up.
Trump’s budget proposal, released last month, prohibits any funding for organizations that provide abortions, including Planned Parenthood. If the proposal passes, the U.S.’s largest provider of family planning services will not be able to participate in any federal program, thereby eliminating federal funding for services like cancer screening, sexually transmitted disease testing, and infertility prevention.
