Reproductive health advocates are pushing lawmakers to enact a series of bills before the holiday recess. One of the highest priorities is a bill to lower the price of contraceptives at college campus clinics and clinics that serve low-income women. Other priorities are funding for family planning programs and to study post-partum depression, reports Women’s eNews.
Birth Control prices have sky-rocketed this year as an unintended side-effect of the Deficit Reduction Act of 2005, which took effect in January and included a provision prohibiting clinics on college campus and those that serve low-income women from purchasing contraceptives from pharmaceutical companies at deeply discounted rates. Corrective bills have been introduced in both the House and the Senate, but if Congress does not pass them, women will continue to pay as much as $50/month or more for contraceptives.
“We absolutely need Congress to act,” said Cecile Richards, president of the Planned Parenthood Federation of America of the corrective legislation. “Every day we don’t solve this problem there are more and more people who don’t have access to birth control.”
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