Opinion: Court Ruling Could Hit Birth-Control Programs Abroad

The Supreme Court’s ruling Monday that the government cannot compel for-profit businesses to provide birth-control coverage for employees over owners’ religious objections could have far-reaching implications for efforts to supply contraceptives to women in the developing world, actor and activist Ashley Judd writes in a column for Al Jazeera America.

The court found for Hobby Lobby and Conestoga Wood Specialties, which resisted covering intrauterine devices, or IUDs, in employee health plans. Ms. Judd, a member of the board of global health charity Population Services International, says the decision lends credence to religious objections to IUDs and thus “may have inadvertently opened a door for attacks on federal support for IUDs and other lifesaving family-planning options.”

She writes that “ideologically driven restrictions” have hamstrung efforts “to get family-planning services to support the world’s poorest women. … My colleagues at PSI and I are concerned that the Hobby Lobby decision could give rise to a newly invigorated round of restrictions on access to contraception everywhere.”