President Barack Obama‘s health reform plan will force private insurers to cover women’s preventative health services, including birth control medicines, without a deductible or co-pay, starting in August 2012.

Barack Obama

On Aug. 1, the Obama Administration announced the requirement, which it included as part of the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act, passed in March 2010.

Covered services will include an annual physical, screenings for gestational diabetes and domestic violence counseling, in addition to birth control and the “morning after” pill.

The plan met with immediate objection from Jeanne Monahan, Director of Family Research Council’s Center for Human Dignity.

“The new rule will force many Americans to violate their consciences or refrain from participating in health care insurance, further burdening an already costly system,” Monahan said in a statement. “For an administration that promised to protect conscience laws in effect now, this decision completely ignores opinion, research and science that do not support a pro-abortion ideology.”

The health reform law remains under more than 20 federal court challenges. So far courts have differed in their views on whether the law, especially its individual mandate forcing Americans, starting in January 2014, to either buy insurance or pay a fine, is constitutional. The law is likely to reach the U.S. Supreme Court for a final decision within the next year or so.