The Threat On Women’s Access to Birth Control
Birth control is nothing unusual to your average college student. Around the middle teenage years, young women normally find themselves taking a small, oral pill daily, or other alternative of birth control, that helps to regulate their bodies and protect them from unexpected, and early pregnancies.
Women have had easy access to acquiring birth control thanks to the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act (PPACA). That may quickly change if Republican Mitt Romney is elected for President this upcoming 2012 election.
The PPACA requires employers to offer coverage of birth control in their health plans, and it ensures 
that insurances cover the costs of perscription birth control and other emergency contraceptives. As stated on Romney’s campaign page, Romney plans to repeal and replace this act.
Karl Frisch, a Democratic Strategist, wrote a blog for the Huffington Post criticizing Romney’s position on birth control.
“In Mitt Romney’s America, women would not even be able to turn to birth control to prevent unplanned pregnancies. Not only does Romney believe that states should be able to outlaw all forms of birth control, but he and his choice for vice president would cut all government funding for Planned Parenthood,” said Frisch.
This decision would widely affect women, and especially the students roaming Bloomsburg University’s campus. The college environment is exciting as it is equally dangerous to young students. The peer pressure weighs heavy on female college students to freely have sexual intercourse with multiple partners, and potentially even unprotected. Most young women have no idea that their access to birth control is at risk.
If the PPACA is overturned birth control will no longer be covered by insurance and will return to being full price and in simplest terms, expensive. Attending college alone is pricey, and birth control added to a student’s overall expenses will have negative outcomes.
Concerning oral contraceptives, Lainie Reinhart, a 20-year-old Bloomsburg University student said, “ I pay five dollars a month, and that’s because I have a generic version.” Learning that the PPACA could potentially be overturned and what the devastating outcomes could be Reinhart said, “I can’t even afford my electric bill!”
Like Reinhart, most students do not have the extra cash to pay for fully priced contraceptives. If birth control is no longer insured, and students need to pay out of pocket for their contraceptives, they may stop purchasing them altogether to save whatever extra cash they have. This being the case, many female students will no longer have the protection they need and may find themselves in an unexpected situation: pregnant.
Carly Morton, a Bloomsburg University student, does not seem to be as concerned about the potential threat on birth control. When asked if she could afford her birth control at full price Morton said, “Yeah I’d have the money. I’d have to, I don’t want to go off it.”
Clearly, students vary from one another. When it comes to financial status, personal ideals, and thoughts on sexual safety, these students differ greatly.
Luckily, Bloomsburg University provides students with a sufficient and less than naive student health center. If worse comes to worse the health center distributes emergency contraceptives for a fee. The emergency contraceptive should be ingested within 72 hours after unprotected sex. They also offer pregnancy tests if necessary. Condoms can be found at the health center as well.
Though the student health center provides emergency contraception, condoms, and pregnancy tests now, whose to say that these items will still be available after the potential overturning of the PPACA? The everlasting concern is the health and sexual safety of women everywhere, and whether they have the choice, and option of when, to start or prolong their families.
