Good morning, Broadsheet readers! Starbucks is issuing new guidelines on Pride decorations, Kim Kardashian's fast-growing brand Skims is opening brick-and-mortar stores, and Fortune's Maria Aspan shares how a new executive order will address some of the barriers to birth control access turned up by her reporting. Happy Wednesday!
- Birth control breakthrough? A year after the Supreme Court overturned Roe v. Wade, we have some rare good news for the 73 million U.S. women of reproductive age.
It’s maddeningly, unreasonably difficult for women to get access to the right birth control, as I reported in this April investigation for Fortune. One of the most infuriating problems is that insurance companies are widely ignoring federal law. The Affordable Care Act requires private insurers to fully cover any contraception that a woman’s doctor deems medically necessary—but in practice, my investigation found, many insurance companies regularly refuse to cover some contraceptives. As a result, many women are unable to afford the birth control they want (and their medical providers prescribe), while the companies that develop and sell new kinds of contraceptives have struggled to stay in business.
