The US Department of Health and Human Services has announced that several of the recommendations of the Institute of Medicine. Therefore, health insurance companies will now have to cover birth control, testing for some sexually transmitted diseases, breast pumps, counseling for domestic violence, without deductibles or copays.
For reasons I have mentioned before, this is excellent news.
The health care reform law passed last year required coverage of preventative care, and a report by the Institutes of Medicine has been released, and recommends covering birth control without copays or deductibles. From the Washington Post:
Virtually all health insurance plans could soon be required to offer female patients free coverage of prescription birth control, breast-pump rentals, counseling for domestic violence, and annual wellness exams and HIV tests as a result of recommendations released Tuesday by an independent advisory panel of health experts.
This is excellent news. Birth control should be covered by health insurance. And no one should be allowed to prevent women from accessing it, not pharmacists who refuse to do their jobs, and not parents abusing their children by denying them something they have the right to use.
Besides contraception, the recommendation to cover interpersonal violence counseling, breast pump rentals, screening for cancer and STDs, and wellness exams is also really good news.
And to what should be no one’s surprise, anti–choicers are freaking out. When will the people learn that the abortion debate is not really about abortion, but rather about controlling female sexuality.
Via RH Reality Check and Echidne.
In a referendum, Malta has voted to legalize divorce. From CBC News:
Malta, a tiny, staunchly Catholic Mediterranean island, has voted in favour of legalizing divorce, according to the results of a referendum.
[snip]
Sunday’s final results of the polling the day before showed that 52.67 per cent of people voted in favour of divorce, according to the Times of Malta.
Prime Minister Lawrence Gonzi, who had campaigned against divorce, said parliament would respect the will of the people in the nonbinding referendum and work on legislation to legalize divorce….
This is an excellent move, and it should be no–fault divorce that is legalized. In a civilized society we do not force people to remain together if they do not want to. It should be no–fault divorce It should be emphasized that no–fault divorce has no long–term effect on the divorce rate (cite). From the previous it is clear that it is utterly ridiculous to argue that no–fault divorce threatens marriage. In addition, no–fault divorce reduces female suicide by 20%, likely reduces the number of women killed by their spouses, and reduces domestic violence against both men and women by up to a third (cite). With this information in mind, it is clear that anyone who would rather that people commit suicide and be murdered than get divorced clearly has seriously fucked up priorities.
This article (trigger warning: domestic violence) from the Daily Mail speaks for itself about why fundamentalism is bad and harmful to women.
It reduces women’s likelihood of being murdered by their spouse by enabling them to escape from an abusive partner, reports the Vancouver Sun.
