September 12, 2014 11:25 AM UTC

Planned Parenthood Debunks Gardner's Contraception Math

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• by: Colorado Pols

A new ad running in Colorado from Planned Parenthood Action Fund tears into GOP U.S. Senate candidate Cory Gardner's "alternative plan" for over-the-counter sales of oral contraceptives, meant to replace the Affordable Care Act's guarantee of no-cost access to birth control for insured women once Gardner's stated goal of "repealing Obamacare" is achieved. From PPAF's release:

Here’s what you should know about Gardner’s dangerous record on women’s health, and what his OTC proposal really does when paired with his other positions:

• Gardner has voted consistently — and unsuccessfully — to repeal the Affordable Care Act (ACA) and take away women’s full coverage for all birth control methods. This is important, because it’s thanks to the ACA that women are able to get coverage of the full range of FDA-approved birth control at no cost.
• By taking away the birth control benefit, Gardner would actually make women pay more. How much more? Up to $600 a year.
• The nonpartisan research group PolitiFact rated Gardner’s claim that his proposal is “cheaper and easier for you” as “mostly false.”
• Gardner’s proposal ignores the fact that birth control is not “one size fits all”: many women don’t use the pill, and some of the most effective methods (like the IUD) need to be inserted by a trained health care provider.
• The American Congress of Obstetricians and Gynecologists issued a statement to make clear that Cory Gardner’s proposal is an unworkable choice between birth control access and affordability.
• American women saved $483 million over the past year alone thanks to the birth control benefit; Gardner wants to hand that bill right back to women.

While the issue of contraception has been well–some might say exhaustively–covered during this campaign, we'd say it's very important for someone on the Democratic side to knock back Gardner's "alternative" plan on the merits. It's one thing to explain how Gardner's long record of support for proposals that could ban certain forms of birth control makes his newfound zeal for over-the-counter birth control look like election year whitewash. But beyond that, there is the details of Gardner's proposal compared to the Affordable Care Act guarantee of zero-copay coverage for birth control. 

And those details prove that Gardner's deal is in and of itself a bad deal. However one feels about the politics of Gardner's come-lately support for OTC birth control, or the focus on the issue by Democrats, that's a message Democrats do need to get out there.