The Democrat-led Pennsylvania House passed a bill on June 25 requiring health insurers—including Medicaid and the Children’s Health Insurance Program—to pay for birth control medicine, devices, and emergency contraceptive drugs, also known as the morning-after pill, without a cost-sharing requirement.
House Bill 1140 next goes to the Pennsylvania Senate.
The Contraceptives Access for All Act codifies a policy that’s already in practice in Pennsylvania. The bill was sponsored by Democrat state Rep. Leanne Krueger.
“There’s currently no protection in state law for contraceptive access, and we need to make sure that Pennsylvanians have access to the medications that they need,” Ms. Krueger told her colleagues from the House floor. “We’ve worked very hard over the past year to negotiate the language of this bill with stakeholders.”
She called the bill a true compromise.
The bill passed on a vote of 133–69. The measure will be referred to the appropriate Senate standing committee for review, Kate Eckhart Flessner, spokesperson for Senate Majority Leader Joe Pittman, said in an email to The Epoch Times. Ms. Flessner didn’t indicate if the bill is likely to pass in the Republican-led Senate.
Contraceptive medicine is used for more than preventing pregnancy, Ms. Krueger said. It is used to treat heavy bleeding and pain with menstrual periods, endometriosis, and pelvic inflammatory disease.
“It really shouldn’t matter why an individual requests contraceptive care from their doctor,” Ms. Krueger said.
Contraceptive coverage came under scrutiny when the nuns of Little Sisters of the Poor and the craft retailer Hobby Lobby challenged the requirement that they provide contraceptive coverage for women on their insurance plans, because it clashed with their religious beliefs.
Access to contraceptives has been a political issue in the 2024 election season, with Democrats claiming that Republicans want to ban contraceptives. Republicans have not said this.
Earlier in June, Republicans in the U.S. Senate rejected a bill similar to the Pennsylvania plan. The Right to Contraception Act would have carved into federal law the right for people to buy and use contraceptives, for health care providers to provide them, and for the morning-after pill to remain available.
Republicans in the Senate called the proposal a political stunt because contraceptives are readily available and access to them isn’t under threat, they said.
