On Wednesday, Republicans killed a bill that would have federally protected an individual’s right to access birth control and a healthcare worker’s right to distribute it.
The Right to Contraception Act passed a Democratic-led House in 2022. Since then it has been blocked by Senate Republicans at every turn.
The latest attempt to pass the measure was considered a “messaging” or protest vote and in the end only Republican Senators Lisa Murkowski (R-Alaska) and Susan Collins (R-Maine) crossed the political aisle to vote in the affirmative. The rest of the GOP cohort gave a defiant thumbs down, claiming that any effort to codify the right to contraception in federal law is unnecessary.
“‘Democrats’ fear mongering and lies on contraception are nothing more than a means to infringe on Americans’ political and religious rights,” Sen. Rick Scott (R-Fla) posted on X, formerly known as Twitter.
“Contraception is legal, to my knowledge—it’s not in any jeopardy,” Sen. John Cornyn (R-Texas) claimed on the Senate floor. “And yet Sen.Schumer wants to schedule a show vote that suggests that somehow it is, maybe striking fear or anxiety in the minds of some.”
It is wonderful to hear anti-abortion legislators with a well-documented lust for power reaffirm the long-established right to access and provide birth control. There’s just one painfully obvious problem with their feeble assurances: They’re lying.
Republicans havebeen lying about the safety, effectiveness and use of contraception for decades with the sole purpose of curtailing access to various methods of birth control.
- In 2014, The U.S. Supreme Court ended the federally mandated requirement for employer-based insurance to cover contraception—a decision praised by Republican lawmakers as a “win for religious freedom.”
- In 2021, Missouri Republicans led by then-state Sen. Paul Wieland (R-Mo.) tried to block Medicaid-funded access to IUDs and emergency contraception, claiming both are abortifacients.
- In 2020, the Trump administration gave the state of Texas permission to exclude emergency contraception from Medicaid-funded family planning programs. That waiver remains in effect to this day.
In recent years, the lying has only persisted.
- Republican legislators in Missouri killed a bill that would have expanded access to oral contraception, claiming birth control pills cause abortions.
- Anti-abortion zealots in Louisiana blocked a bill that would have enshrined the right to contraception in the state’s Constitution, claiming the “morning after pill” is the same as medication abortion pills.
- A “biblical activism” think tank in Idaho is urging state lawmakers to ban both emergency contraception and IUDs, arguing both cause miscarriages, as The Washington Post reports.
- Iowa Republicans successfully ended government subsidies that provided emergency contraception free of charge for victims of sexual assault.
- In Texas, parents can deny their teens access to birth control, despite countless studies showing that when teens cannot access contraceptives they’re more likely to engage in unsafe sexual behavior.
- As candidate and 2024 presumptive Republican nominee for president, Trump said contraception access should be a states’ rights issue, telling interviewer Jon Delano: “You know, things really do have a lot to do with the states, and some states are going to have different policy than others.” (Trump later attempted to walk back his comments, writing on his Truth Social account that he would “never advocate imposing restrictions on birth control” and claiming his previous comments were really “a Democrat fabricated lie.”)
There is a reason why one in five adults living in the U.S. consider the right to use contraception actively under threat—because it is.
Republicans made the same faux guarantees when it came to the constitutional right to access abortion care. This guarantee was disproved when right-wing judges decimated 50 years of legal precedent by overturning Roe v. Wade. It is the same lie fueling the Republican’s so-called “we’ll leave it up to the states” narrative as they simultaneously tout a nationwide abortion ban.
Justice Clarence Thomas’ concurring opinion in Roe laid bare the conservative movement’s battle plans for continuing their full-fledged war on the right to privacy and bodily autonomy by urging the Court to revisit and overturn landmark cases that solidified the right to same-sex marriage and contraception.
The three justices who attempted to save Roe v. Wade—Justices Stephen Breyer, Sonia Sotomayor and Elena Kagan—issued their own warning, writing in a dissenting opinion that “no one should be confident that this majority is done with its work.”
It is politically advantageous for Republicans to lie about their ongoing attacks on birth control and emergency contraception—the Right to Contraception Act was supported by eight in 10 voters, and in general nine out of 10 voters believe access to birth control should be legal. What’s just as clear is how the GOP is continuously attempting to deceive the American public.
The real question is not if birth control access is in jeopardy—that much is certain—but whether voters are going to once again ignore the dying canary in the coal mine of democracy and allow another constitutional right to fall by the wayside.
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