Among women, Trump victory fuels birth-control concerns

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Planned Parenthood of Nassau County offers patient consultations about intrauterine devices and other types of LARCs.
Planned Parenthood of Nassau County offers patient consultations about intrauterine devices and other types of LARCs.
Courtesy Planned Parenthood of Nassau County

Samantha Spoto, a 24-year-old from Oceanside, said that she is considering using a form of birth control that “will last longer than a Trump presidency” — long-acting reversible contraceptives, or LARCs.

And she is not alone. According to Google Trends, searches for IUD, or intrauterine device, spiked to an all-time high in the United States at 9 p.m. the day after Republican Donald Trump was elected president. According to Planned Parenthood of Nassau County, the call center staff reported a sharp increase in the number of people reaching out to learn more about LARCs specifically since Election Day. 

Spoto currently takes an oral contraceptive called Tri-Sprintec — and only pays 10 cents every three months for her prescription, which is covered under her health insurance plan. She said she now worries that costs will skyrocket if and when the Trump administration and members of the GOP-controlled houses of Congress follow through with their promises to defund health care providers such as Planned Parenthood and dismantle the Affordable Care Act, which mandates that health insurers in the marketplace provide coverage for all U.S. Food and Drug Administration-approved birth control methods with no co-payments. 

“Affordable birth control is critical for women — it is central to women’s health,” Spoto said. “The important thing to remember when having this conversation is privilege. Birth control only works if you can afford birth control, and if you don’t have health insurance, it is not affordable or readily available to buy.”

An uncertain future

According to the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services, the Affordable Care Act gave 47 million women access to 22 preventive services — including contraception — with no out-of-pocket costs. Kellyanne Conway, Trump’s campaign manager, said on last weekend’s “Fox News Sunday” that he is considering calling a special session of Congress on the day he’s sworn in to repeal and replace the law.

In an interview with the Wall Street Journal published last Friday, Trump said that he favors keeping the Affordable Care Act provisions that bar insurers from turning away those with pre-existing conditions, as well as its allowance that those up to age 26 can remain on their parents’ insurance. His views on contraception coverage were not addressed. 

House Speaker Paul Ryan, a conservative Republican from Wisconsin who has pushed for “conscience clause” legislation that would allow employers to refuse contraception coverage for their workers, declined to give his opinion on whether a new plan or a modified version of the Affordable Care Act should include the birth control provision in an interview with CNN anchor Jake Tapper on Sunday. “Look, I’m not going to get into all the little nitty-gritty details of these things,” Ryan said. 

Nicole Berney, a 26-year-old from Great Neck, said it’s hard to know what’s going to happen when Trump takes office in January because he has no political experience or voting record. Uncertainty has motivated her to get an IUD as soon as possible. 

“I don’t want to risk it,” she said. “I was already planning on getting one but now I feel like I need to get it before January … We should not operate on that much fear, but fear is something we all have, given this election cycle, because our president-elect has shown a lack of respect towards women. Policy does take time to go into effect, but women should want to take action and have control over their own health care.” 

Weighing options

According to Dr. Jill Maura Rabin, a professor of obstetrics and gynecology at Hofstra Northwell School of Medicine, doctors have been encouraging patients to switch from birth control pills to LARCs. “It’s shifting over to LARCs very nicely,” she said. “We want people on the LARCs because it leads to less unintended pregnancy.”

Rabin explained that this is because the pill’s success as a contraceptive depends on the patient remembering to take it each day.

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