The following is an excerpt from an article published by CNBC. The full article is available here.

The Trump administration recently released regulations allowing employers, colleges, and universities to eliminate birth-control coverage from their health-benefit plans because of religious or moral objections. These new rules will allow employers and schools to discriminate against women while undermining the importance of women’s health.

What does this mean for women? It means their employer or school can drop birth control coverage from their health plan. The result is that these women will have to pay hundreds of dollars a year if they continue using birth control. Some women, who cannot afford the cost, will stop using birth control. Others will have to choose between birth control and other medical care or necessities. While there are claims that not many employers or schools will actually cut birth control, the reality could be quite different.

More than half a million people alone, plus their dependents, work full time for Catholic hospitals. Under these rules, these employees and dependents can simply have their birth control coverage disappear. As can the students enrolled in the hundreds of religiously affiliated colleges and universities in America. The rule also opens up the door for an unknown number of companies and schools to claim a moral objection to birth control without any religious underpinnings.

In an article for CNBC, CHIR’s Dania Palanker discusses how the recent regulations that expand exemptions to the birth control coverage requirements discriminate against women and downplay the importance of contraception as a women’s health service. You can read the full article here.