Free Sterilizations Must be Offered to All College Women, Says HHS

◼ link - Terence P. Jeffrey/CNS

All student health plans, HHS said Friday as it finalized a new regulation under the Affordable Care Act (otherwise known as Obamacare) must cover the full set of cost-free women’s “preventive services” that HHS ordered last month must be covered by all U.S. health care plans.

These free “preventive services” include surgical sterilization procedures and all Food and Drug Administration-approved contraceptives, including those that cause abortions.

...“Sterilization,” the IOM report said, “is a surgical procedure.”

In explaining the prevalence of contraception and sterilization in the United States, the IOM’s report on its recommendations cited a government study entitled, “The Use of Contraception in the United States: 1982 to 2008,” that was published by HHS’s Centers for Disease Control and Prevention in 2010.

The study said that 16.7 percent of American women between the ages of 15 and 44 have been sterilized. This includes 4.5 percent of American women ages 15 to 44 who have never been married.