The Trump administration’s move enabling employers to deny coverage for contraception is unacceptable. As an infertility specialist, it may seem that this would not affect me: I help people build families. Ironically, however, I write numerous prescriptions for oral contraceptive pills.

Many fertility therapies are preceded by oral contraception. Patients greet this revelation with surprise, but oral contraceptive pills make treatments more predictable. Other noncontraceptive uses for these pills include treatment of the symptoms and sometimes life-threatening sequelae of endometriosis, fibroids, and polycystic ovary syndrome.

For example, women with polycystic ovary syndrome are at risk for endometrial cancer. The first-line treatment to avoid this risk is the use of an oral contraceptive pill. Does the federal government desire to make these treatments prohibitively expensive too?

I often think that we should rename oral contraceptive pills because of the various indications for which they are used. Another part of me, however, wants to keep the terminology. There was a time when women did not have choices. The development of safe, reliable birth control was a monumental medical advance. No one should back away from that, not even a fertility specialist.

Choice about family planning and treatment of gynecologic disorders should not just be to those of financial means.

Dr. Mary E. Sabatini

Newton

The writer works in obstetrics and gynecology, in the Division of Reproductive Endocrinology and Infertility, at Massachusetts General Hospital. This letter was cosigned by Drs. Irene Souter, Jan Shifren, and John Petrozza.