Rosie’s Law will be re-filed by Rep. Sheryl Cole and Sen. Sarah Eckhardt for the 2025 Texas legislative session. Rosie’s Law would restore and expand insurance coverage of abortion and contraception for Texans. 

Rosie’s law would require Medicaid, private insurance plans, and federal health insurance marketplace plans to:

• Provide coverage for legal abortion care without cost-sharing requirements; 
• Provide coverage for all forms of contraception approved by the FDA–including sterilization and emergency contraception, for contraception options and pain and anxiety management counseling, as well as for birth control device insertion and removal, and for pain and anxiety management associated with device insertion or removal. It would also prohibit cost-sharing requirements or utilization control techniques.

Whether they have private or government-funded health insurance, every Texan should have access to the full range of reproductive health care, including annual screenings, contraception, prenatal care, and abortion.

Rosie’s Law is named in honor of Rosie Jiménez, a 27-year-old beloved mother, student and young Chicana living in McAllen, Texas, who lost her life in 1977 because Medicaid would not cover her abortion care. She could not afford to pay for a safe, legal procedure and died after an unsafe abortion. For people like Rosie who are struggling to make ends meet, insurance coverage bans, like any other abortion ban, can make it impossible to access care. Rosie was the first known victim of the Hyde Amendment, which banned Medicaid coverage of abortion care in 1976.