Target: Louise Melling, Deputy Legal Director of the American Civil Liberties Union
Goal: Support ongoing legal efforts to sustain women’s reproductive rights.
In a hard-won battle from the ongoing war on women’s reproductive rights, a federal appeals court prevented the Trump administration from denying over 100,000 women birth control. This ForceChange petition brought attention to efforts by Trump’s team to expand the number of employers who could exclude contraceptives from employees’ insurance coverage. The Third Circuit Court of Appeals answered pleas for intervention by upholding a lower court decision blocking this administration’s latest attempt to control women’s bodies and their most private health choices.
The court, in a written statement on its ruling, said: “nowhere in the enabling statute did Congress grant the agency the authority to exempt entities from providing insurance coverage for such services.” In other words, the Health & Human Services department overstepped its authority and deliberately violated a mandate for contraceptive employment insurance coverage in the Affordable Care Act. Likely, taking another shot at the ACA and an Obama legacy was the primary driving force behind this effort.
The administration defended this dictate by claiming they wanted to give an out to employers who objected to birth control for moral or religious reasons. In curbing a so-called assault on religious freedom, HHS instead launched a full-scale assault on women’s rights and freedoms. No employer – and no government entity – should have a say in a woman’s reproductive decisions. This latest attempt to play morality police would have only punished economically disadvantaged women and further deprived them of their liberty to make choices for themselves.
Sign this petition to commend advocates who fought against this destructive decision and the dangerous precedent it would have set.
PETITION LETTER:
Dear Ms. Melling,
Those who cry the loudest about limited government seem to have no issue with the government wading into an individual’s most private matters…especially if that individual happens to be a female. Thank you for taking a decisive stand against one such abuse: the proposed employer exemptions for the ACA contraceptive mandate. Your hard work helped secure an important win in a time when the stakes are higher than ever.
Because of the appeals court’s recent ruling, at least 100,000 women now—and so many more in the future—will retain access to more than birth control. They will retain their reproductive rights. They will not have to worry about the unwanted interjection of those who object to birth control yet show no inclination to care for the disadvantaged children born from lacking access to contraceptives. They will be comforted that, at least in this instance, their voices and their choices mattered.
Thank you for helping remind us that the rules of law and the American values they should protect still count.
Sincerely,
[Your Name Here]
Photo Credit: Charlotte Cooper
260 Signatures