(The hill) – Democrats are pushing for birth control protections as part of their election-year campaign for reproductive rights, seeking to underscore Republican efforts to oppose protections that many voters say they support.
Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer (D-N.Y.) plans to hold a vote on the Right to Contraception Act next month.
That effort will likely be blocked, but Democrats want Republicans to speak up on the issue of contraception, especially since the Republican Party is still unsure how to articulate its stance on reproductive rights following the Supreme Court’s overturning of Roe v. Wade.
Republicans blocked the same bill last year, arguing that it was designed to protect abortion drugs, not contraceptives.
Polls consistently show that there is broad, bipartisan support for birth control. According to Gallup’s annual Values and Beliefs Poll released last year, 88 percent of Americans said birth control is morally acceptable.
An Impact Research poll commissioned by Americans for Contraception in February found that contraception is also mobilizing voters who are currently less enthusiastic about voting, including adolescent Latino and female voters and black voters.
Most Republicans argue that birth control is not at risk, and opponents are a petite minority. They say bills to protect access to birth control solve problems that don’t exist and are attempts to make political capital.
“If that’s the case, I don’t know why you wouldn’t just support a bill that doesn’t matter anyway and get the issue out of the way rather than giving the Democrats ammunition,” said Mary Ziegler, a law professor at the University of California, Davis School of Law and a leading expert on abortion policy.
Former President Trump brought the issue back into the national spotlight this week when he suggested in a television interview that he would leave contraception policy to the states but supported efforts to restrict access.
The likely Republican nominee quickly backtracked on social media, saying, “I have never advocated for restrictions on birth control or other contraceptives, and I never will.”
Trump went even further, saying, “I do not support a ban on birth control, and the Republican Party will not do so either.”
But recent moves by Republican lawmakers and governors at the state level tell a different story and have heightened a sense of urgency among reproductive rights advocates and Democrats.
In Arizona, Republicans unanimously blocked a bill protecting the right to contraception earlier this year. In Tennessee, Republicans in the House of Representatives rejected a bill in a committee that would have made it clear that the state’s abortion ban does not jeopardize access to contraception or fertility treatments.
In Missouri, a comprehensive bill to improve women’s health care – which also includes better access to contraception – was blocked for months because Republicans mistakenly confused contraception with abortion drugs.
According to the Guttmacher Institute, a research group on abortion rights, lawmakers in 27 states have introduced more than 59 bills and proposed constitutional amendments during the current legislative session that would enshrine the right to access contraceptives.
Only the Democratic-controlled Virginia state legislature was able to pass a law that would have enshrined the right to contraception in the state constitution.
But Governor Glenn Youngkin (R-R) vetoed the bill, saying he supported the right to contraception but was concerned about the law’s impact on religious freedom. In his veto message, he also said the measure would infringe on parents’ rights.
Ziegler said Youngkin’s veto message shows Republicans’ messaging problem.
“They are for the right to contraception, but they are very ambivalent about what that means,” she said.
Democrats want to capitalize on the broader issue of reproductive rights, which goes beyond abortion. For them, Trump’s comments and the state-level battles over contraception are examples of how explosive this issue can be.
“Contraception should be a non-negotiable reproductive right, yet Republican state legislators are targeting birth control as their latest target,” said Heather Williams, chair of the Democratic Legislative Campaign Committee.
“Contraception gives Americans the power to decide whether and how they start their families – Republican lawmakers have no say in those decisions,” she added.
The largest anti-abortion groups express a neutral stance on contraception and claim that there is no access problem.
“Medicare and Medicaid cover it. Title X [the federal family planning program] is focused on that. And for years we’ve been sold the obviously false story that Planned Parenthood somehow has it under control. Can we get our nearly $700 million back from Planned Parenthood if they screwed up?” says Kristi Hamrick, chief policy strategist at Students for Life of America.
Access on site, however, is a different story.
“We don’t have broad access to the full spectrum of contraception for everyone in this country, especially for people who are struggling to make ends meet,” says Rachel Fey, vice president of strategic policy at Power to Decide, an organization that advocates for sexual and reproductive empowerment.
Title X, the federal grant program to support family planning services for low-income women, has been stagnantly funded since fiscal year 2014 and cannot meet the increasing demand for family planning services.
In Texas, a federal court ruled that Title X clinics cannot provide contraception to teenagers without parental consent. The state also excluded Planned Parenthood clinics from Medicaid coverage, leaving low-income women with restricted options.
This year, Indiana required hospitals to provide access to long-term contraception to new mothers on Medicaid benefits, but IUDs were removed from the law because Republicans viewed these intrauterine devices as abortifacient.
Concerns about access to contraception existed long before the Supreme Court’s Dobbs decision, but experts say the ruling has made it more hard to separate the issue of contraception from abortion policy.
“That’s really the Republican dilemma,” Ziegler said. “I think most Republicans would say they’re for contraception. But there are deeper disagreements about what contraception is.”
Fey noted that there is a parallel between the erosion of abortion rights and developments in the area of contraception.
“People understand all the nuances that abortion has in their lives and in the lives of their loved ones. And I think the same is true for contraception,” she said, so it’s not an issue that needs to be “heated up” much more.
“I think it’s just that there is an acute threat right now. And, you know, that threat in many ways reflects how we got to where we are now in terms of access to abortion in this country.”
