Landmark Birth Control Expansion Bill, June 11

Oregon Governor Kate Brown will sign House Bill 3343 at a ceremony scheduled for 1:45pm Thursday, June 11th at the State Capitol. Planned Parenthood Advocates of Oregon, which introduced the measure, will be available for interviews, along with women’s health champion legislators and allied organizations. The law will make Oregon the first state in the nation to require health insurance companies to give a year’s supply of the pill, the patch or the ring at the same time. Dispensing a one-year supply of birth control is associated with a 30 percent reduction in the odds of conceiving an unplanned pregnancy compared with dispensing for 30 or 90 days. The signing ceremony comes on the heels of the 50th anniversary of Griswold v. Connecticut, the landmark U.S. Supreme Court decision that provided the first constitutional protection for birth control and paved the way for the nearly unanimous acceptance of contraception that now exists in this country.