The new health care reform law has made incredible headway in expanding access to care for women and promoting gender equality, with particularly positive benefits for young women.

Take discrimination. Young women previously suffered some of the worst and most discriminatory practices of the insurance companies.  However, when the law takes full effect in 2014, insurance companies will no longer be allowed to charge women higher rates than men for the same health plan, and women will no longer be denied coverage due to pregnancy or other gender-based health needs.

Or access to preventive care. The new law will dramatically lower the cost of preventive health care for women by eliminating co-pays and deductibles for preventive services in all new insurance plans. Now, women can receive vaccines and screenings, including mammograms, pap smears, and HPV vaccinations, completely free of charge.

One area that still needs work is women’s access to birth control. Currently, the most effective methods of birth control all require a prescription and have costly co-pays that women must finance out of pocket. Even the pill, the most common form of birth control for women, costs between $180 and $600 a year, not counting the cost of going to the doctor to get the prescription in the first place.

For young women, in particular, the cost of prescription birth control is a constant struggle. More than half of 18 to 34 year old women say that they have used birth control inconsistently due to cost, putting themselves at a higher risk for unintended pregnancy.  It is also important to note that fully half of all pregnancies in the U.S. are unplanned as reported by women themselves, and three-quarters of unplanned pregnancies are to women 29 and younger. Accordingly, for many young women, prescription birth control is essential health care, and therefore, it is critical that they have access to it. No woman should risk her body – or a baby – because she cannot afford effective contraceptive care.

This week, a new report from the Institute of Medicine (IOM) was the latest to weigh in on women’s access to birth control, and recommended that contraceptives be fully covered by health insurance plans with no cost to patients “so that women can better avoid unwanted pregnancies and space their pregnancies to promote optimal birth outcomes.”

If the IOM’s recommendations are accepted by the Department of Health and Human Services (HHS), women will no longer have to shell out expensive co-pays, deductibles or other out-of-pocket fees for approved birth control methods. That’s why it is so important to tell HHS to fully implement the report’s recommendations.

These recommendations, if accepted, would be a huge step forward for young women’s health in this country, and will be critical for both reducing unintended pregnancy among our age demographic and fostering reproductive autonomy. The vast majority of young women aged 18–34 already believe that prescription birth control should be fully covered, which is no surprise, since our generation of young women need it – and we need fair and equitable access to it.