Author: Danielle Campoamor

Danielle Campoamor is a former NBC and TODAY reporter and award-winning freelance writer and editor published in The New York Times, Washington Post, TIME, New York Magazine's The Cut, CNN, MSNBC, Mother Jones, Marie Claire, Vogue, Vanity Fair and more. She covers a wide variety of topics, including reproductive justice and abortion care, gun violence, mental health, gender-based violence, climate change and more. She lives in Brooklyn, N.Y., with her husband and two feral sons.

Republicans Say Access to Birth Control Is Protected. They’re Lying.

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. However, since then it has been blocked by Senate Republicans at every turn.

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.

The Hypocrisy of a Post-Roe Mother’s Day

This Mother’s Day—like the countless that have come before it—conservative politicians who fancy themselves members of the party that upholds “family values” will send out social media posts praising the moms among us. They’ll wax poetic about the “decision” to become a mother and how it’s the “most selfless, most important job in the world.” Some may even go so far as to task their speech writers with crafting some moving message about how vital mothers are; how we’re raising the next generation of prolific thinkers and world leaders; how we should be revered “not just today, but every day.” 

And in the post-Roe world they created with their anti-abortion policies that have forced people into motherhood, attacked IVF and fertility treatments, and left doctors terrified to treat pregnant patients to the point that women are slipping into comas, miscarrying in hospital lobby bathrooms and enduring unnecessary C-sections instead of receiving common abortion care, it will all be one big, giant pile of bullshit.