US Supreme Court takes up contraception finance restriction

WASHINGTON: The US Supreme Court appeared divided Wednesday as it examined a reform undertaken by the Trump administration that restricts women´s access to free birth control in the name of religion.

All but one of the nine judges assessed the case from their homes by telephone because of the coronavirus lockdown. Liberal judge Ruth Bader Ginsburg, 87, took part from a hospital in Baltimore, where she was admitted for treatment of a gallbladder infection. “You have just tossed entirely to the wind what Congress thought was essential, that women be provided these services with no hassle, no cost to them,” Ginsburg told the lawyer representing the administration. The case involves one of the main points of the ground-breaking health care reform law known as Obamacare, which was enacted in 2010. The clause in question obliged employers providing medical insurance for their workers to include coverage for birth control. Defenders of the law say it benefitted more than 56 million women who until then got little reimbursement or none when they bought birth control pills or IUDs. But conservative groups challenged the change as soon as it came into effect. In 2014, the Supreme Court sided with employers who argued they did not want to provide such coverage because it clashed with their religious values.