Imagine a world where no woman has to pay for prescription birth control—a world where the government subsidizes voluntary family planning and actively promotes safer sex by eliminating all co-pays for birth control. This world, one in which financial obstacles would no longer prevent women from regulating their reproduction, could become a reality in the near future, thanks to a provision under the new health care reform law that allocates funds for “maternal health.” A new campaign sponsored by Planned Parenthood entitled “Birth Control Matters” seeks to translate the vague language of “maternal health” into tangible preventive care: free contraceptive access for all women.

Birth control does matter—and so does its cost. Even women with insurance coverage (women like myself), still turn out their pockets for co-pays that add up (most co-pays fall between $30 and $60 a month). Women without health insurance pay even more. So what’s a woman to do when she must choose between birth control and her other bills? What’s a higher priority—a heated house or the ability to exercise reproductive autonomy?

Cecile Richards, the President of the Planned Parenthood Federation of America, discussed these quandaries last Tuesday at Harvard University in a room packed with cupcakes, pizza, condoms, and over 60 students ready to campaign for no-cost contraceptive access under the new federal health care reform law. At Harvard, we’re gathering forces to undertake a student-driven campaign of our own in conjunction with the Planned Parenthood’s Birth Control Matters: the Accessible Birth Control Campaign, or ABC. Although we have yet to determine a specific course of action, we plan on targeting decision makers in the US Department of Health and Human Services by gathering petition signatures, creating multimedia youth-focused messages, and delivering as many personal pleas as we can to drive home our point: accessible birth control is a youth issue that students are ready to fight for.

As college students, it won’t be too long until many of us rely on insurance plans under the new federal health care reform law. This campaign, if successful, will benefit us as well as millions of women who struggle to access birth control because of financial obstacles. In fact, 55% of young women who have wanted birth control have not been able to access it at some point because of its cost. It’s up to us to use our position of privilege as students at Harvard, a university with so many resources, to stand up for our reproductive rights, as well as the rights and health of women who aren’t in a position to advocate for themselves.

At Harvard this week, Cecile Richards spoke about the power of the Birth Control Matters campaign to transcend standard political boundaries and to excite people who might not normally advocate for reproductive rights. Because let’s face it—who opposes the free availability of birth control for all women? Besides the United States Conference of Catholic bishops, who have already opposed it-- not many. If we can pursue a bipartisan effort to enable women’s reproductive autonomy, we could make tangible headway in decreasing unplanned pregnancies as well as partisan animosity.  

The fight to win no-cost birth control under the new health care reform law would improve our country’s economic well being as well as its quest for health, gender, youth, class and race equality. By providing women’s preventive health care, the government could save millions of dollars that it currently spends each day on the health care costs of teen pregnancy support, and for children whose parents are unable or unprepared to support them financially or emotionally.