Poll: Americans really love Obamacare's birth control coverage

Sorry, Hobby Lobby! The health law's contraception requirement is a hit with close to 70 percent of Americans

Published April 23, 2014 1:20PM (EDT)

                         (AP/Tony Gutierrez)
(AP/Tony Gutierrez)

According to a new poll, nearly 70 precent of Americans support the birth control requirement of the Affordable Care Act. (Take that, Hobby Lobby.)

The survey, published in the Journal of the American Medical Association reveals that 69 percent of respondents supported “mandated coverage of birth control medications in health plans.”

As Tara Culp-Ressler at ThinkProgress notes, this isn't the first survey to find strong support for contraceptive coverage. Another recent poll found that two thirds of female voters don’t believe that for-profit corporations like Hobby Lobby or Conestoga Wood Specialties should be allowed to deny their employees birth control coverage.

More from the survey, which found that people "unlikely to use such coverage" were the most likely to say they didn't support birth control coverage:

Overall, 69% of respondents supported mandated coverage of birth control medications in health plans, with significantly higher odds of support among women, black, and Hispanic respondents. Support for mandated coverage of birth control medication was lower than for other benefits, including services that have prompted public debate (eg, vaccination and mental health services). The small group who supported coverage for services except birth control medication included a higher proportion of persons unlikely to use such coverage. [...]

In this study, the majority of participants supported universal coverage of birth control medications, as well as mandated coverage of several other services. These results are similar to prior polls describing support for the contraceptive coverage mandate among 61% to 66% of US adults.4- 6 In this study, women, black, and Hispanic respondents were more likely to support coverage of birth control medication benefits than men, older respondents, and adults without children younger than 18 years.


By Katie McDonough

Katie McDonough is Salon's politics writer, focusing on gender, sexuality and reproductive justice. Follow her on Twitter @kmcdonovgh or email her at kmcdonough@salon.com.

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