The Trump administration is planning to roll back the birth control insurance mandate in the Affordable Care Act, The New York Times reported, saying it could happen as soon as Friday.
The contraceptive coverage mandate allowed more than 55 million women to gain access to birth control without co-pays, the Times said, citing a study by the Obama administration.
New regulations would allow employers to opt out of such coverage "based on its sincerely held religious beliefs," the Times said.
Religious schools, colleges, hospitals, and charitable organizations, along with some owners of private for-profit companies, have filed lawsuits targeting the mandate.
In 2014, the U.S. Supreme Court ruled 5-4 against the Obama administration, saying the Affordable Care Act, also known as Obamacare, must exempt closely-held firms like Hobby Lobby from the rule that forced them to pay for employee's birth control, CBS News reported.
The court ruled that Hobby Lobby and other similar businesses were protected by the Religious Freedom Restoration Act of 1993, which states that an individual's religious expression shouldn't be "substantially burdened" by a law unless there is a "compelling government interest," per CBS News.
In the Hobby Lobby ruling, Supreme Court Justice Samuel Alito wrote that the ACA's contraception rule "would put these merchants to a difficult choice: either give up the right to seek judicial protection of their religious liberty or forgo the benefits, available to their competitors, of operating as corporations."
The National Women's Law Center argued, though, that the contraception rule allowed women to save $1.4 billion in oral contraception cost in 2013 and said it would likely sue if the Trump administration moved forward with its plans, The Washington Post reported.
"It means choosing between preventive care like contraceptives and paying their rent, their mortgage, electric bill," Mara Gandal-Powers, senior counsel at the National Women's Law Center, told the Post.
An early draft of the new rule drew praise from some conservative groups, which argue that fewer than 200,000 women would be affected and they could get separate policies from insurers, USA Today reported in May.
"At long last, the United States government has acknowledged that people can get contraceptives without forcing nuns to provide them," Mark Rienzi, senior counsel at the Becket Fund for Religious Liberty told USA Today then. "That is sensible, fair, and in keeping with the president's promise to the Little Sisters and other religious groups serving the poor."
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