“In issuing today’s rules, the National Council of Jewish Women (NCJW) believes the Trump Administration has once again chosen religious interests over women’s health. The rules, which will affect more than 62 million women nationwide, are nothing but attempts to pander to religious conservatives and place untenable limits on women’s decision making ability. For nearly 125 years, NCJW has worked to protect and advance women’s bodily autonomy; these rules take that power away from women and hand it over to the whims of an employer.

“Every woman — no matter where she works or what her employer personally believes about contraception — deserves access to the improved birth control coverage instituted by the Affordable Care Act. A woman must not be forced to give up her own religious or reproductive freedoms based on the job she holds or what her employer believes. This regulation was made necessary by the US Supreme Court’s extremely ill-advised decision in Hobby Lobby which said that any private, ‘closely-held’ company could assert a religious objection to having birth control covered in its company-provided health insurance.

“There are differing religious views on the use of contraception, and it should be up to women to decide on whether and when to use contraception based on their own beliefs and needs. By allowing employers with religious or moral objections to deny coverage of birth control to its employees, the beliefs of an employer are once again being held in higher regard than the religious and moral beliefs of the employee. On this most-personal decision, no woman should be forced to abide by the religious views of her or her insured spouse’s employer.

“NCJW has worked to improve access to birth control for decades — which thanks to the Affordable Care Act has brought unintended pregnancy rates overall and among teens to the lowest rate they’ve been in decades. Our members across the country played an important role in ensuring that the regulations implementing the Affordable Care Act would guarantee contraceptive coverage at no added cost to women, and we will remain vigilant to ensure that the gains made are permanent and that the changes needed will eventually be enacted.”