The Biden administration is withdrawing a set of proposed rules aimed at expanding access to contraception that would have made it more difficult for employer-sponsored health plans and insurers to exclude coverage of birth control.
The move, announced late Monday in a Federal Register notice, will leave in place Trump-era rules allowing employers to cite "non-religious moral objections" to the Affordable Care Act's requirement to cover contraception.
The Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) and other agencies involved said the rules were being withdrawn in order "to focus their time and resources on matters other than finalizing these rules."
At the time the rules were proposed last year, HHS said it wanted to balance access to contraceptives with the religious objections certain employers may have to providing the benefit.
The law requires all health insurance offered by the vast majority of employers to cover at least one of 18 forms of birth control approved by the Food and Drug Administration.
But the Trump administration in 2018 greatly expanded the so-called conscience protections of employers, so that any entity with a religious or moral objection to contraception did not have to cover it in their employer-sponsored health insurance plans.
The Biden administration's proposed rule would also have given a workaround to allow employees of religious organizations to obtain contraceptive services for free, directly from a willing provider or facility.
"Ensuring access to contraception at no cost is a national public health imperative,” HHS said at the time, citing the 2022 Supreme Court ruling that overturned Roe v. Wade and ended the constitutional right to abortion.
"Now more than ever, access to and coverage of birth control is critical as the Biden-Harris Administration works to help ensure women everywhere can get the contraception they need, when they need it," HHS Secretary Xavier Becerra said in a 2023 statement.
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