Thanks to President Obama and the Affordable Care Act, "HHS (the Department of Health and Human Services) adopted additional Guidelines for Women's Preventive Services - including well-woman visits, support for breastfeeding equipment, contraception and domestic violence screening and counseling. Under the law, many private plans also must cover regular well-baby and well-child visits without cost sharing."
At a time when parents are struggling to feed and house their families, basic health care including contraception is more important than ever. One half of our children are unplanned and one half live in poverty. It is obvious from these statistics that poor women don't have access to and cannot afford health care let alone family planning in order to limit the number of children that they have and can care for.
Gov. Romney brags that he will do away with our new health care law when he becomes president - the health care law patterned after his in Massachusetts. I believe that is why a lot of women will vote for President Obama in the up-coming election - they want to keep the expanded health care for women and they want the freedom to make personal decisions with their doctor.
The expansion of Medicaid to cover more poor people is also in question in many states including Ohio. Gov. Kasich doesn't seem to realize that health care via the emergency room is much more expensive than preventive care and the rest of us foot the bill for those without health care.
Carol Lazear Mitchell
Marietta
