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Women's Health Advocates Say Pennsylvania Is Going in the Wrong Direction

By Kim Glovas

PHILADELPHIA (CBS) -- While the Affordable Care Act calls for free access to birth control for all women, some states, including Pennsylvania, continue to chip away at other health services for women.

Birth control is treated as a preventive health service under the Affordable Care Act.   But Pennsylvania governor Tom Corbett just signed a state budget that denies abortion coverage to anyone who participates in health exchanges (see related story).

Maggie Groff, with Planned Parenthood of Southeastern Pennsylvania, says that when women have access to birth control, maternal and infant health improves and women have been able to pursue careers and higher education.

But she says Pennsylvania has been whittling away at women's health services for years, and most recently in the latest state budget.

"A provision in some states is to deny coverage through the health exchanges for any kind of abortion coverage. That's the law that just passed in Pennsylvania this session, which Governor Corbett just signed in June."

Recently the Centers for Disease Control named birth control as one of the top ten public health achievements of the past century.

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